


The Kindest Cut

by Guede



Series: Edge [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood Drinking, Blood Kink, Chains, Dissociation, Dubious Consent, Dubious Morality, Episode: s01e16 Shadow, Episode: s01e17 Hell House, Guilt, Hand Jobs, Handcuffs, Incest, Loss of Control, M/M, Minor Character Death, Sam Winchester's Demonic Powers, Suicidal Thoughts, Temporary Character Death, Torture, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Vampire Turning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:47:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27829963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: Dean has a problem.  Sam’s got a solution.  Things don’t work out well.
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Series: Edge [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2036881
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15





	1. Tough Love

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written and posted to LiveJournal in 2006.

Dean got in late again. The wind caught the door and slammed it back into the frame behind him, which woke up Sam. He groaned and glanced at the clock, which was winking a too-perky “3:56” at him. The creepy extra cuckoo clock on the wall started ticking—well, it’d been ticking all this time, but Sam had just woken up enough to notice it and now that he had, he was having a really hard time tuning it out. Something about the leering farmer carved into the pendulum.

The end of the bed shook and rattled as Dean fell against it. He righted himself, then banged something against the wall. Sam stopped feeling annoyed and started feeling the cold curl of worry. Maybe Dean wasn’t the most considerate of men, but this didn’t sound like fucking with the little brother. “Hey. Hey, Dean?”

When Sam sat up, Dean froze. Or rather, his silhouette froze. The rest of him couldn’t really be seen in the dark. “Go back to sleep, Sam,” Dean said.

He didn’t sound all that great. His voice was raspy and a little pained, and when he straightened up again, he had to put one hand against the wall. “What happened?”

Dean slowly turned to face the bathroom. After a moment, he started walking towards it. He used a halting stride and every so often, his head would appear to sprout a foot-long spike: his arm, bending so he could rub at his neck. “Got kicked out of the cemetery. The groundskeeper here takes his job _way_ too seriously.”

And Dean probably hadn’t helped, with his attitude. Sam wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or to go back to being annoyed. But in any case, Dean was mobile and if it’d been like that, then he could handle first aid by himself. “Did you happen to find out anything before he booted your ass?”

All Dean was right now was a shadow, distorted and oddly fluid. Then he stopped in the bathroom doorway to flick on the light, which came flooding out and damn near blinded Sam for a second. He blinked hard, then blinked a second time in surprise. But by then Dean had already gone inside and half-closed the door so Sam couldn’t see him anymore. They must have been spending too much time staking out scary places in the dark, because for a moment there Dean had looked about as pale as the Pillsbury Doughboy that he’d used to tease Sam with when they’d been younger.

“I found out which grave’s got the vampire,” Dean called back. His voice sounded better. Fuller. It was still a little uneven, like he was talking around a wad of gum in his mouth. He probably was coming down with a cold from their dunking in the river two nights ago. “You know, Sam, I offered to take the graveyard shift this time out of the goodness of my heart, since you had those nightmares last night and were so tired you just about fell asleep at the wheel to—”

“Goodness of his heart. Yeah, nothing to do with Lydia living across from the graveyard…” Sam laid back down. By the time he’d finished his last sentence, he was mumbling into the pillow. By the time he heard Dean shooting back some half-assed reply, he was halfway asleep and not inclined to make the effort to respond.

* * *

Hollywood tended to make the killing of a vampire way too dramatic, but then, so did most of the original lore. The real truth of the matter was that as long as you got the coffin out while the vampire was sleeping—and it was pretty stupid to try it any other way—it was really boring. One person flipped up the lid, the other one squirted holy water, and then down came the stake. Usually the corpse just crumbled away at that point, and the biggest worry was getting the grave filled up before somebody came by to press vandalism and desecration charges.

Actually, Sam found it relaxing compared to what they usually had to do to put down a monster. He sat back on his heels and blew out his breath, then wiped one hand across his forehead. He felt grit and looked at his palm, then grimaced. “Gross.”

“It’s just a little corpse dust, Sammy. C’mon, I know you’ve gotten worse stuff on you,” Dean half-heartedly cracked. He kicked the lid down with his foot and glanced off to the side. A gleaming, crooked line of sweat tracked over the side of his face.

Sam looked harder at him, and finally decided that yeah, Dean was actually paler than usual except for his cheeks, which were on the flushed side. “Hey, you all right? Do we need to stop for some cough syrup before we leave town?”

“Do I sound like I’m coughing?” The first time, Dean hadn’t really been trying to snap at Sam. The second time, he tried way too hard. He knew it too; he looked at Sam, then quickly away to frown at the sky. “I’m fine. And I’m driving. But nice try.”

“Oh, for…I meant cold medicine. Listen, if you’re getting pneumonia or something, we really should head it off now,” Sam corrected himself. But it wasn’t any good because Dean had already grabbed the end of the coffin and started dragging it to the edge of the hole. He was ignoring Sam, as usual. “Do you always have to be so—”

Dean had just swung the whole damn coffin into the grave. He let it go and it slammed down on the bottom, sending a couple clods high into the air, before grabbing a shovel and attacking the mound of dirt they’d made like it’d burned all his Metallica tapes. The coffin was mahogany with chrome steel fittings, and the guy in it had been built like a linebacker. It wasn’t exactly lightweight. When they’d been lifting it out—never get in an enclosed space with a vampiric body, daytime or nighttime—Sam had had a hell of a time handling his end, and he wasn’t all that weak.

Granted, getting something to go down was much easier than getting it to go up, but nevertheless Sam was…not raising an eyebrow so much as making sure he knew where his bottle of holy water and his cross was. He casually moved to the other side of the grave and picked up his shovel. “I just don’t want to end up tucking you into bed with a hot-water bottle and spoonfeeding you chicken soup in a couple days,” he said.

“I’m really feeling the love here,” Dean muttered. The side of his mouth pulled up in a grimace of a cheesy smile. He grunted as he shoved the blade of his shovel into the dirt heap and for some reason, Sam’s eyes went to his hands, which reddened. A second later, Dean was dumping the dirt on top of the coffin so his hands weren’t taking as much strain, but they were still red. It was a strange kind of red, sort of dull and…splotchy. And it was sluggishly spreading up past his cuffs.

He glanced up and Sam belatedly hefted a shovelful into the grave. “Didn’t say I wouldn’t do it. I’d just rather not. We’ve got two hundred miles to the next job.”

“Well, I’m really touched by your concern, but I’m fine, thank you.” Dean stuck his shovel in the mound again. When he turned to drop its load into the grave, Sam squinted at his neck.

No bites, but it might be in a less obvious place. It wasn’t all that comforting how calmly Sam’s mind seemed to be taking this. It was like he’d just clicked into this slightly muffled, numb, ultra-rational mode and he was going to freak the hell out at any minute. Except he couldn’t, because he was _not_ \--

“Dude, are you just going to watch? Should I strip down and stop to drink a Coke or something for your viewing pleasure?” Dean snapped.

“Sorry.” Sam bent back to the dirt, but always with one eye on Dean. And he knew Dean noticed, but Dean didn’t mention it after that. Actually, Dean was dead silent, which was a bigger clue than any that something was wrong.

They were in a pretty secluded part of the cemetery, but the closer it got to noon, the more nervous Sam got, and not just because of the possible problem with Dean. With everything else that was going on, Sam wasn’t real interested in getting thrown in jail on top of it all. So it was with a sigh of relief that he stomped down the last shovelful of dirt. He rolled his shoulders, then turned around to look at Dean. “Great. Let’s—Jesus!”

Dean had been right up behind Sam, so close that Sam could see how the little red veins in Dean’s eyes were bulging up from the whites. Sam hadn’t even—he’d lost track for just a—he just scrambled back and yanked up the shovel in front of himself. Something grazed his arm: ice-cold fingers.

A sick kind of smile, a million times from being relaxed and kidding, strained over Dean’s face. He was still holding his shovel, and he slowly moved his outstretched hand to it. The hand he already had wrapped around it was white all over, and not just at the knuckles. “Man, Sam. It’s a good thing I’m around, or else you’d be in trouble. Don’t you remember what Dad said about not letting down your guard?”

“Yeah,” Sam said after a moment. He thought about glancing behind himself to check for the groundskeeper, but finally nixed that idea and kept his eyes on Dean. “I think we’d better get going.”

“Good. God, I can’t wait to get out of here. Goddamn hotel soap’s giving me something,” Dean muttered. He rubbed at the back of his hand; the collar of his shirt shifted and Sam could see how white the previously covered skin was in compared to the flush of the exposed skin. Then Dean jerked at his jacket and abruptly stalked away from Sam, in the direction of the car.

Sam became aware of the fact that he hadn’t breathed in a while, and did so. He looked down at the grave and a tremendous hot rage suddenly surged up in him. Exploded—his vision actually went white for a second. When it cleared, he was looking at a big, fresh crack in the gravestone.

Well, that was a great reminder of all the other problems they had. They so didn’t need another—shit. Dean was just dropping out of sight and Sam could hear a car driving somewhere nearby; he hastily gathered the rest of their stuff and jogged after Dean.

* * *

About seventy miles out of town, Dean was clearly running a high fever. His face and neck were slicked in sweat, and his collar was so soaked in it that it stuck to his skin. When he forgot to keep his hands clamped to the wheel, they shook, and he was reddened all over. The second time he nearly plowed a semi coming in the opposite direction, Sam turned and told him to pull over. Sam had one hand in his pocket, and it was holding on to a crucifix just as tightly as Dean was onto the wheel.

Dean pulled over. He dragged himself to the passenger’s side with just one mumble about not scratching the car. By the time Sam was in the driver’s seat, Dean had slumped down facing out, and it looked like he might even have fainted. Sam turned down the Led Zeppelin and ended up grabbing the steering wheel just as hard as Dean had been. He wanted to give Dean a nudge, but didn’t dare.

They had just gone through the next town when Dean roused again, turning bleary red eyes on Sam. “You haven’t had lunch yet.”

“I’m not hungry. I’m good,” Sam said in a too-high voice too quickly. He caught himself staring at Dean and had a strangely difficult time making himself look at the road again. It wasn’t just the concern and worry, either; he’d felt a weird pull, and then a snap once he was finally watching the highway again. “You okay?”

“Don’t say I told you so, or cold or no cold, I’m going to kick your ass over and drive again.” Dean turned back to stare outside again. His hand was lying on the seat, fingers half-curled. Every so often he’d scratch lightly at the seat, and sometimes he’d swirl his fingertips over it in an oddly hypnotic way. He was just moving a lot more slowly in general—the first word that sprang to mind, even though it was completely ridiculous, was ‘sensual.’

The chagrined wince Sam felt at that thought shocked him back into thinking properly, because of all the things Dean was, sensual definitely wasn’t one of them. Hadn’t been, that was. Fuck. Oh, fuck, this was so bad.

“Sam?”

“Yeah?” Sam looked over and Dean was staring at him again. It was a strange stare—Dean actually looked lucid. Too lucid. The corner of his mouth was twitching and for a second, the way he was lying there was…lazy, not ill. The fuzziness seeped back into Sam’s mind and he gritted his teeth, trying to will it away. “Are you…is it too bright out?”

Bad thing to say, maybe. Because Dean flinched, and then he—but he abruptly tossed himself back into the seat. He snarled suddenly, and looked back out the window. “Shit.”

It was on the cloudy side today, and anyway, at this time of the year the sun still wasn’t that strong, but Sam had definitely seen Dean walking through some pools of sunlight back at the cemetery. That was the kind of thing that made him doubt himself, even though that could also be accounted for.

“Listen, Sam—” Dean began again, voice hoarse. He hesitated, then punched the dashboard; the movement and loud crack nearly startled Sam into crossing into the other line. “Shit. Sam—you remember that time in Providence? With the…and Dad said. Dad said if he came out and he…we were supposed to hit him and chain him down and go after it.”

Sam bit down on his lip. “Yeah. And we didn’t like it, but we did it.”

“Yeah. Yeah, well…don’t be an idiot, okay? Dad raised us better.” Dean grimaced again and pressed his fingers against his mouth. Then he bit down; Sam looked quickly away, but he couldn’t stop himself from hearing the slight groan Dean made. “He taught us what to do.”

One of those blue rest area signs came up listing some motels and Sam said to hell with it and pulled onto the exit ramp. They weren’t going to make the next job. He wasn’t even sure if Dean would make it to the motel room. He wasn’t sure if _he’d_ make it to the room. “I think you’re getting delirious.”

“Fuck you,” Dean snapped, so violently that Sam jerked his hand off the wheel and towards his pocket. But Dean settled back again, looking too weak to even beat a kitten in a street fight. He stared at the floor. When he spoke again, his voice was so low Sam didn’t at first understand what he was saying. “That wasn’t…Sam, don’t be stupid.”

“I try not to be.” Goddamn it. The motel better have a decent Internet connection, Sam thought. He wasn’t inclined to wait much on finding a solution to this problem. “Take a nap, Dean. I’ll wake you up when we get there.”

Dean looked at him for a long moment. Sam wasn’t looking back, so he didn’t know what Dean’s expression was, but he felt Dean’s gaze like somebody was training a laser on him.

“Yeah. All right,” Dean finally said. His words carried a meaningful heaviness. “Wake me up. But do it right, Sammy.”

* * *

Sam ducked into the car and leaned over Dean with the squirt bottle of holy water in his hand. “Okay, here’s how—oh, shit. Oh, _shit_.”

Dean’s eyelids were slightly open so the wet gleam of his eyes could be seen. He’d gone completely pale and when Sam accidentally brushed his cheek with one hand, his skin was freezing. The center of Sam’s gut twisted hard. He shoved the bottle beneath his arm and jabbed his fingers at Dean’s neck, but he missed the spot and Dean started to fall over. So Sam grabbed him, and then there were voices so Sam had to waste time looking around.

It was just some people heading for a nearby restaurant. Otherwise the parking lot was empty, and a damned good thing because Sam was about a hair away from a panic attack. He yanked Dean back—Dean was like a doll filled with lead weights—and pressed his fingers against Dean’s neck. No pulse. Held his hand in front of Dean’s mouth and nose. No breath.

“Oh, fuck, no. No, no, no, no-- _no_. Stop it. Just—” Inside. It was fine, Sam told himself. It wasn’t like last time. This was only temporary, and Sam was going to proceed according to plan. He’d have to hurry to do that because the sky was already going orange and yellow with dusk, and—

\-- _fuck_ \--

\--Inside. He carried Dean inside and left him in the bathroom. Absently took note of the old-fashioned exposed plumbing, then was irrationally proud of himself for operating so well when his mind was filled with the loudest, most annoying buzzing in the world. Sam got the trunk open and started pulling out gear and stuffing it into a duffel bag so he could get it inside without any weird looks, just in case somebody passed by. He kept dropping things so by the time he was back in the bathroom, he was gritting his teeth hard enough to feel cracks starting to form in them.

Dean was still—out. Dean was unconscious, Sam decided. Good thing, because if he was awake, he’d be pissed as hell that Sam was chaining him to the plumbing. He was so cold.

Sam finished and sat back, suddenly feeling very shaky. He wiped his hands on his thighs and found they were wet and clammy. It was so disgusting he ran his hands through the sink before he went out. He checked his watch, then the sky, then his watch because he lost track of his estimate the first time—probably an hour till sunset. He needed a butcher’s shop, or at least a supermarket. And he needed to do some research. And he needed to call Dad. He needed to get moving.

He got moving.

* * *

Ten-thirty at night. The various kinds of blood he’d poured off the meat cuts he’d bought were in plastic take-out containers that were nested in ice in the sink, since the room hadn’t come with a big enough fridge. Anyway, this way they were right at hand. Sam had gotten his laptop set up—the room had cable ‘net, thank God—and was making notes. He’d called Dad, but when the beep had sounded, he’d had no idea what to say and in the end, had just said there was trouble and call back as soon as possible. It probably wasn’t going to work.

Something let out a loud crack and Sam jerked up his head, but Dean was still how he’d been. The wall settling, Sam thought, and got back to researching. His eyes were beginning to burn and he flicked through ten websites before he realized he’d just stopped reading. He moved the cursor to the ‘Back’ button and was about to click when something else clicked. The side of Sam’s face suddenly went numb.

He put his laptop into sleep mode and set it to the side, out in the other room, before he turned to look at the bathtub. He still flinched and flattened against the door, hiccupping a gasp.

Dean had lifted his head—his head, nothing else—and was staring at Sam. He was grinning, easy and a little incredulous. The chains clinked as he lifted his manacled hands. “Very funny, Sam. Though I hope you’re following up with a stripper. Otherwise this is a pretty lousy joke.”

“Listen, Dean, I’ve got something you’ll probably want in the sink. I’m just…going…to…move….over…” Sam slowly said. Just as slowly, he started to ease himself towards the sink. He was still looking at Dean. That pull was back, and it was much, much stronger this time. So strong in fact that Sam found himself moving in a diagonal, both sideways and forward. The bathroom was way too small for this to be good.

“What would you know about what I want?” Dean…he practically purred it. He suddenly, fluidly shifted to lean as far over the edge of the bathtub as he could. He was still really pale—it was like his tan had been completely reabsorbed—but the whites of his eyes had cleared up. “Come on, Sam. Joke’s over, so let me out of these.”

Sam managed to hook his hand over the sink edge. He teetered for a second, then abruptly yanked himself back. “Not till you—”

“Goddamn it!” Dean abruptly threw himself against the chains. The links clanged and the plumbing creaked and Dean’s eyes were blazing. He snarled and snapped a few times, furiously pulling at the chains. “Let me the fuck out of these, you pathetic piece of shit! You don’t even fucking know what to do! I always have to tell you, and you ignore me anyway _but don’t you dare this time. Listen to me._ ”

This time the pull was practically a physical thing Sam could see. It lassoed him and whipped tight, and the sink actually started groaning from how hard he was hanging onto it. His hands were slipping. “No! Dean! Don’t—Dean!”

“Sa~am,” Dean mockingly lilted.

Except that _wasn’t_ Sam’s brother, and this was such a _fucking_ \--

\--something went off in Sam’s head again, sending him crumpling to the ground with a blinding headache. At the same time, there was an incredibly loud thud and rattle of chains, followed by a low, pained groan. The motel must be practically empty if nobody was screaming at them to shut up, Sam inanely thought.

The pain in his head receded and he was able to look up. The wall behind the tub had gained large, long gouges that went all the way through the paint to the wood beneath it. Lots of layers of paint there…beneath them, Dean was slumped in the tub. He had bad gashes on his forehead and left cheekbone, and when he lifted his hands, Sam could see blue-black swellings beneath the manacles. He was staring at Sam again, but he looked scared and angry.

“Jesus. Okay, guess I believe you about that telekinetic stuff now,” Dean weakly said. He cracked a skeleton laugh as he gradually tipped over. His head landed on the edge of the tub nearest Sam, and after a moment, his fingers hooked over the edge, too. “Goddamn it, Sam. Did you wake up stupid today?”

“No, but we’re not—what happened to you?” Sam warily threw his arm over the sink counter and pulled himself up. He nervously tapped over the plastic lids before he finally settled on the cow blood.

Dean started to sit up, then winced and laid back. He twisted his head so he could sort of look at Sam. “I—it—” his fact contorted and he appeared to have a spasm; his hands jerked towards his throat before the chains stopped him “—it—I can’t—damn it, Sam. Just…Christ. That really hurt. Unfair advantage, man.”

“Well, I’ll apologize after you’re not so…hungry,” Sam muttered. He pulled the lid off the container and started to squat down by the tub. Things nearly got fucked up right there.

The blood sloshed and splattered out as Sam jerked back, then completely spilled as something seized his sleeve. He heard the container splash into the toilet a moment before his knees slammed into the side of the tub. Nails sank into his wrist and hot breath hit his throat, Dean’s head bashed him in the temple, and _shit_ \--

“God!” Dean half-screamed. His recoil stopped him from getting his other arm around Sam and gave Sam time to grab the chains.

The smell of burnt flesh stank up Sam’s nose. It got worse when he pulled Dean down so Dean had to keep his head against the tub edge again, but Sam made himself ignore it. He made himself ignore the wicked burn the little bag of dried angelica had left on Dean’s cheek, too, and just kept his arm pressed down over Dean’s shoulders. “Okay, you’re not that kind. Good thing I didn’t go with the crucifix.”

“Sam, damn it, just do the smart thing,” Dean urgently hissed. He twisted beneath Sam’s arm. He would’ve been strong enough to get free, too, if Sam hadn’t let go of the manacles and dangled the angelica bag over Dean’s eye, which tracked to stare at it. Dean’s pupils were so dilated that if he’d been on the street, he would’ve gotten hit for cocaine possession. “I’m not—it—”

He was starting to sound strangled again; a fragment of memory drifted through Sam’s mind. “Can’t talk about it till I say you’re a—a vampire?”

That was a yes, since Dean sagged in relief. Sam didn’t make the mistake of letting that go or loosening up; he pressed down harder and Dean winced, but looked approving. “It caught me and it—I wasn’t sure if it was a real bite. Damn bastard _kissed_ me.”

“Did you bleed?” Sam asked.

Dean flinched, then nodded. He tried to smile. “Say one word about STDs and I’ll—Jesus Christ, Sam, don’t try to work around this. Just get a stake and get it over with.” He tried to smile again. “I promise not to blame you.”

“Thanks, but no thanks. Look, I’ve got some stuff to tide you over till we fix this—and I’ve already got some ideas about that, so don’t—freak out on me. I’m already freaking out and I really don’t need it,” Sam muttered. “Now I’m going to—”

“ _No_. Sam, I can’t do that.” A shiver went through Dean and Sam almost burned his eye.

Sam almost snarled, too. He wasn’t dealing with this. “Yes, you can. I’m going to check things thoroughly this time, so don’t even bring up Roy. Vampirism’s got a lot of information on it, and other people have gotten over it before, so we just have to find out how--”

“No, I can’t.” Dean’s jaw hardened. In another second it was going to start jutting, and then Sam was going to punch him.

“Dean. I’m not killing you. We’re not arguing about this,” Sam said.

For a couple seconds they stared at each other. Then Sam caught himself swaying in and he smashed the bag into the side of Dean’s jaw. He let go of Dean almost at once and grabbed for the toilet. Threw up in it, then opened his eyes to see his vomit all mixed with the cow’s blood and almost threw up again.

“I can’t drink any of that,” Dean tiredly said. When Sam looked over, Dean was lying with his head on the tub edge. His skin wasn’t pale now—it was bloodless and papery, like it belonged to some octogenarian who was going to pop off any minute now. He looked trashed. “I—I can smell it now, and it’s so different. It’s—I can’t drink those. Not any of them. It’s got to be human.”

“Got to be soon, too,” Sam muttered. He wiped his mouth with a hank of toilet paper, which he tossed into the toilet afterwards and flushed. Then he looked at Dean again. “You’re…”

Dean shrugged. “Newly made ones have high metabolisms and are really prone to starvation, which is why the vamps haven’t taken over the earth yet. Monsters 101.”

“Thanks, professor.” Sam sat back on his heels and glanced around. It was a mess. He was going to have to spend all night cleaning up if he didn’t want the smell to attract any attention. “Okay.”

That got Dean’s attention. His eyes widened and he started to pull himself up. “No. I’m not. And _we’re_ not arguing about _this_.”

“No, we are not,” Sam said. He wrapped the drawstring of the angelica bag around his hand to make sure he wouldn’t drop it. He lifted his hand towards his throat, then put it down. It wasn’t like he was wearing a shirt with a collar or anything. “I’m not watching you die again, damn it. Do you any-- _any_ idea what it was like? It was like I—”

“I’m not doing it because I can’t be sure I won’t do something—” Dean started.

The headache was almost at explosion point again; Sam slammed down hard on it. “And if you die I can’t be sure I won’t goddamn do something!”

His words bounced crazily around the room. They went back to staring at each other while the echoes died down. Sam had no idea what his face was doing, but Dean’s went from stubborn to disbelieving and finally, oddly, to a little taken aback.

Dean looked down, then up again. He pursed his lips a couple times. “Could you…you know…pull that no-hands crap again? Do you have a handle on it yet?”

“I’m working on it,” Sam said. He wasn’t exactly lying. He gingerly scooted over, trying not to get more blood on himself, and slowly reached for Dean’s shoulder. At the same time, he brought up his other hand so he could smash the bag of angelica into Dean’s face if necessary.

He pulled Dean forward and Dean sucked in his breath—he was shaking a little beneath Sam’s hand. “You are such a fucking idiot,” Dean raggedly mumbled.

Sam agreed a little bit, but he wasn’t about to tell Dean that. He tightened his hold on Dean’s shoulders; Dean’s fingers bumped against Sam’s chest, then dropped to flatten against the tub edge. Dean’s breathing sped up when Sam tilted his head, and for a second he was just hovering. Then he jerked down and it _hurt_. Oh, Jesus, it hurt. It was all Sam could do not to just rip Dean off right then and there. He hissed in a breath and counted in his head. One, two, three.

The stabbing pain spread out. It didn’t decrease in intensity, really, but Sam got a little used to it. Enough so it wasn’t just a big blinding spot of agony and he could distinguish what was Dean’s lips and what were his teeth and his tongue. His tongue was moving, wriggling against Sam’s throat and he’d sunk down so Sam actually was more holding him up than in place. Ten, eleven.

Dean suddenly groaned. The chains rattled and Sam tried to look to see what Dean was doing, but Dean moved. Pressed forward; his hands were warm now, and they rubbed up against Sam’s chest in a…peculiar way. He was…moaning? Fuck. He was moaning. Moaning and…fourteen, fifteen.

Sam was starting to get dizzy, but he didn’t want to have to do this again very soon so he gritted his teeth. Ignored the way the chains were starting to clink rhythmically. It was harder to pretend Dean wasn’t—wasn’t—

\--then cold air was hitting the throb on the side of Sam’s neck and Dean was in the tub, convulsing with this _look_ on his face, like he was dying of happiness and like he wanted to kill himself right then and there. He stopped before Sam could reach in, ending up on his side. He was very still for counts twenty through twenty-seven; Sam wadded up some toilet paper against his neck, but he could feel the place already scabbing over. “Dean?”

“You-- _fucking_ \--son of a bitch,” Dean rasped. Sobbed, almost. His shoulders shook hard once, and when Sam reached down to him, he jerked away. He was careful not to roll over. “Oh, Christ. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry. It’s just—I didn’t mean—”

“Dean. _Dean_. It’s okay,” Sam’s mouth said. The rest of him had gone numb. He wasn’t really thinking. “It’s just…part of this thing. Which we’re gonna fix. We’ll fix it. Just…can you sit up? Are you fine for now? I need to know. _Dean_. Please just sit up.”

Dean slowly, awkwardly sat up halfway, then started to go down again so Sam had to grab for him. He stiffened up, then abruptly threw up his head. His eyes frantically ran over Sam’s face for a moment. “Did I take too much?”

“No…no, actually I could’ve let you take more. Do you—”

“ _No_ ,” Dean fiercely said. He looked about as in control of himself as Sam felt—barely. “No. I don’t…it was like having an espresso. It was really…a little’s going to go a long way, I think.”

“Good, because I really need to get back to work. I…I’m just going to get the key to the chains. That all right?” Sam replied. Logistics. Logistics were good, good and calming and distracting. He wasn’t going to think about anything else. He couldn’t afford to, anyway.

After thinking a moment, Dean gave Sam a small nod. Sam scrambled out of there, barely remembering to take off his shoes to keep from getting blood on the carpet. He slid to the side of the doorway and took a deep breath. It didn’t help.

Something clunked in the bathroom, so Sam peeked back inside. Dean had put his wrists on the tub edge and was hunched over them with his face pressed into his hands. He would’ve looked like he was praying if his shoulders hadn’t been shaking so much.

Sam turned away and pressed the heels of his hands into his face. His head hurt. His neck hurt, and the middle of his chest hurt. But…but Dean wasn’t dead, thank God. They could work with that.

He needed to find something—right, the key. Key. Key, key, key…


	2. Unhealthy Habits

The bathroom was clean, they’d both showered, and Sam still could smell the tang of blood in the air. He grimaced and squinted at his laptop. “I should’ve gone with you. I didn’t need sleep that badly.”

“Yeah, you did.” Dean had wanted to spend the whole night locked in the bathroom, even though he said he wasn’t feeling any cravings, but in the end he’d been persuaded that discussing the situation might go better if they weren’t shouting through a door. He still was sitting as far from Sam as he could get and still be on the bed. “Besides, the vamp was going out every other night, and it was supposed to be an off-night. He broke pattern. Not your fault.”

“Still, I could’ve—” Sam looked up, saw Dean’s face, and decided that that avenue of conversation didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of being productive. “We probably should get going as soon as possible in the morning. That…got loud.”

He didn’t see so much as feel Dean wincing, and he regretted the words as soon as he’d said them. But Dean didn’t give him a chance to make up for it. “What you should’ve done was just kill me.”

The laptop nearly slid off Sam’s legs when he put down his hands a little too hard. He stared at the picture of a traditional Dracula and reminded himself that punching out the screen would also be unproductive. “If you’re going to grab a stake the moment I’m not looking—”

“What did you mean by if I die, you might ‘do something’?” Dean abruptly asked.

Sam saved what notes he had and looked up at Dean. The burns and the gashes were healing over—they’d probably be gone by this same time tomorrow—but they still looked pretty bad. “I don’t know. I don’t really want to find out. Dean—”

“And what’s with these powers of yours? Why do they just come up at random times?” Dean continued in a harsh voice. He was circling one wrist with his other hand, rubbing at the extensive bruising there.

As if in sympathy, the pain in Sam’s head suddenly crested. He froze, then looked frantically about, but nothing had exploded or cracked or anything. Thankfully. On the other hand, Dean was still staring at him. “I don’t think…it’s random,” Sam hesitantly said. He had been coming up with a theory, but hadn’t really sat down and thought it through. “Dad said what killed Mom was a demon. Every time I get “something,” it somehow ends up connected to that thing. That poltergeist in our old house, Max and his mom…Jessica…”

“The vamp broke pattern.” Dean glanced to the side frowning. He stretched out his arms in front of himself and twisted his hand up one, shoving back the sleeve. He’d looked almost normal again right after he’d…drunk…but now he was going pale. “Came after me,” he muttered thoughtfully, talking more to himself than to Sam.

Sam clicked on a link. The paragraph there wasn’t helpful, so he backtracked. His skin started to prickle and he raised his head to catch Dean eying him. His stomach went cold and he suddenly wished he had the ability to fade into the woodwork.

As soon as Sam did, Dean jerked his head around. Then he growled and shifted a few inches further away. “Damn it.”

“It’s not—you,” Sam muttered. “Do you…need any more?”

“No. I’m not going to stake myself, either.” Dean stared at the far wall. His hand was still on his arm and his fingers slowly curled so he was digging them deep into his flesh. “You still should probably cuff me to the headboard before you go to sleep.”

“Who said I was going to sleep?” Sam glanced at the bedside clock. “I’d just have to get up in another hour and a half anyway.”

Or maybe they’d just leave insanely early. The web-surfing had long since passed useful and now Sam wasn’t even skimming. The lingering smell in the room was driving him quietly nuts, and he was starting to get a cramp in his leg.

“You’re not driving,” Dean said. He returned Sam’s look with the kind of condescending expression that always made Sam want to shove him into the nearest vertical surface.

After turning off the laptop, Sam put it away and started working through the pile of notes he’d scribbled down on the hotel stationary. He had more and better ones on the computer, but he couldn’t even remember what he’d thought about two seconds ago so he figured he’d best stick with the solid stuff. “You aren’t, either. You’re going to get really drowsy after noon.”

“So we’ll switch then.” The bed shook as Dean kicked at the floor. He squeezed his hand up his arm, then worked it back down. He’d only looked directly at Sam for a second, and now he was back to watching the wall. “If you’re sleeping in the car, you’d still better chain me to the wheel.”

“And what if the police pull us over? It’s another hundred miles to go and you drive even worse when you’re worked up,” Sam snapped. He nearly crumpled the papers in his hands before he got hold of himself. “I’ll stay awake. I’ve got a lot of stuff to work through anyway.”

Dean laughed incredulously. The sound, grating as it was, was still more cheerful than the look in his eyes. He kept gouging his fingers into his arm so the flesh beneath was starting to go from red to purplish. “You can’t stay up forever. Look, Sam, you can’t act like I’m all fine now. I’m not. And if you don’t cuff me, I can’t be held responsible for anything that might happen.”

He already was, that was obvious enough. Sam bit down on his lip without thinking; Dean’s eyes went to Sam’s mouth. Then Dean’s face twisted and he jerked himself completely around so his back was to Sam.

“Damn it,” Sam muttered. It was clear how much everything was getting to Dean, even though most of it was patently out of his control, and Sam didn’t want to feed into that. But he also could see the wisdom of keeping a repeat of the bathroom from happening while they were cruising at eighty on the highway. “Fine. Hey, are you sure we should still go? The job can probably wait—”

“No, we’re going.” Dean restlessly moved about on his corner of the bed. He’d stopped digging his nails into his arm, but now he was staring at the way the skin had bruised up. It was just a little less creepy than how he looked at Sam now, sometimes. “I need to kill something.”

Well, Sam could understand that. It was a damn shame they couldn’t kill that vampire twice over, so they’d better find something else. And maybe it’d help calm down Dean a bit.

* * *

“All right, there,” Sam said, leaning back. He absently tossed the keys in the air while he waited for Dean to get out of the driver’s seat.

Dean slowly pulled his arm out through the wheel and rubbed at his wrists, which were looking pretty bad again. He kept his face angled away. The line of his jaw was stiff with tension. “How about you go out and walk around? I’m not going to drive off and leave your ass.”

“Is the sun that bad? I thought you said it wasn’t bothering you.” Sam wasn’t protesting—not at having to get out of the car, anyway. He was already halfway out when Dean answered.

“It’s not bothering me so much I can’t do things,” Dean called out. He scooted over and was flattened against the passenger’s side before Sam could even round the front of the car, and at no time did he raise his head to look straight at Sam. A muscle was twitching in his cheek, making the remains of the burn there dance. “I’d just rather—not go outside if I don’t have to.”

He could be so weird about asking for favors sometimes. It usually amused Sam more than it annoyed him, but right now Sam’s nerves were a little touchy. He barely kept himself from grinding his teeth as he slid into the driver’s seat. He closed the door, then leaned over with the handcuffs out.

Without looking, Dean reached for them. His fingers were trembling and his reflexes were off…which a couple of hours in handcuffs would be expected to do to a guy. “I’ll do it. Just get driving.”

“Dean—” Sam irritably exhaled.

“Goddamn it, Sam, I’m trying really hard not to fuck up again here, but it doesn’t _help_ when you keep leaning over me,” Dean snapped. He lunged—still not looking—and got hold of the handcuffs, ripping them out of Sam’s fingers. 

One blur later, he was chained to the door and Sam was feeling more than a little uncomfortable; that’d been way too fast. Sam turned the key in the ignition and hit the gas, only to have the engine snarl at him: he was still in ‘park.’ He winced and hastily shifted gears.

“Don’t break the damn transmission.” In contrast to a few seconds ago, Dean’s voice barely had any snap to it. He’d leaned his forehead against the window so the light slanted over his face and showed that the dark rings under his eyes weren’t just tricks with shadows. Then he sighed and closed his eyes. “Did you call Dad yet?”

“Yeah. I don’t think he’s coming.” The next road sign that whizzed by told Sam they were only an hour away, as long as they didn’t run into any of the construction that’d bogged them down all morning. They could roll into town, check into a room and then Dean could nap off his increasing sluggishness while Sam did the usual preliminary poking around.

Dean exhaled again, more loudly. “Did you mention that I suck blood now?”

“Not—in—so many words,” Sam stalled. He’d been pretty circumspect with his message, but frankly, he wasn’t all that sure that being blunt and specific would have done any good. Dad hadn’t shown when Dean had been dying, or when they’d had to go back to their old house—which Sam had meant to ask about back in Chicago, but he hadn’t had the time.

And if Dad did come, Sam wasn’t positive that that would be a good thing.

“He should know,” Dean insisted. “For one thing, he’d know what to do.”

“By the time he would’ve found us, we’ll have this thing fixed. Besides, he left and he knew that we were going to keep getting into trouble. Actually, we let him leave. And that was a shitty decision, by the way, but we made it and now it’s stupid to pretend like we’re kids and he’s going to swoop in and save us all the time.” They really shouldn’t have done that. If Dad had still been with them, then he could’ve gone with Dean and then this whole problem wouldn’t exist. And Sam honestly didn’t know whether he blamed himself or his father more for that.

He should’ve argued more. He should have, but the deva had burst in and fear and adrenaline had gotten in the way. For that matter, instinct had gotten in the way, and instinct had said the safest thing for everybody was to split up for a while, then regroup. Of course, afterward he’d realized there’d be no regrouping. Twenty-twenty hindsight was a pain in the ass.

“Shitty decision? Hey, you had your chance to—” Dean suddenly stopped and sat up, grimacing as if he’d just swallowed something unpleasant. He twisted uneasily in the seat and pulled at the handcuffs. “What the…”

Sam was about to ask what was wrong, but right then the sound of the road under the tires changed from the low rasp of concrete to a loud, metallic rattling. He jerked back to looking at the road, then sagged in mixed relief and jittery amusement. They’d just gone across a bridge, over some creek.

He resettled his hands on the wheel before looking at Dean again. Then Sam blinked hard, because Dean had gone from rising anger to limp and grey-faced. “Jesus. What hap—do we need to pull over?”

“No. No, I’m feeling…better.” The color was coming back into Dean’s face, though it was taking its time about it. He glanced over his shoulder, then turned around and swallowed hard, looking faintly nauseated. “That was weird. I just felt like somebody was pulling out my guts for a second.”

It hit Sam like somebody had slapped him across the face. “Running water. You can’t—well, I guess you can cross it, but not that easily. The legend’s half-right.”

“I thought that was werewolves,” Dean slowly said, sounding puzzled.

“They gave that to those later, but the really old legends said that about both werewolves and vampires. And they—” Sam started to lift his hand from the wheel before he caught himself. He gave himself a mental slap for still being so slow on the uptake. “Do you have a pulse now?”

Dean blinked hard and started to say something, then shrugged. He twisted his hands around to get his fingers on his wrist, exposing the wide swath of bruising there. Seeing that gave _Sam’s_ guts a wrench…and nudged at his brain, but he couldn’t quite remember what was being nudged.

After a moment, Dean nodded. “Not much of one, but it’s there. You know, I’m not sure I can hold my breath either. I thought vampires were supposed to be undead.”

“They are. But all that stuff about no pulses and breathing was mostly from the Victorian Age. If you go back to Central European tradition and—hang on a second.” Sam shifted around till he could dig in his pockets. The car started to drift and he jerked the wheel around, then pulled out a silver crucifix, which he held out to Dean. “I want to try something really quick.”

He started to explain, but the wary look on Dean’s face said he’d already gotten the idea. Dean eyed the crucifix for a long moment before he finally leaned forward to let the crucifix brush his cheek. His eyebrow went up when nothing happened—no sizzling, no yelp of pain. “Okay. So this is a pre-Christian version or something?”

“I guess. Which means I haven’t been looking back far enough,” Sam muttered to himself. Great. Half his notes were completely useless, in that case. He’d have to start over.

Something warm bumped Sam’s hand, then pressed up against it. He felt the barest pricking before he yanked away his hand. At the same time, Dean violently recoiled in the opposite direction; the car rocked a bit and Sam had to wrench the wheel around to keep them from plowing into the guardrail. For a couple minutes afterward, all Sam could hear was their jagged, mismatched gasping. Yeah, Dean was definitely breathing, was the only coherent thought Sam had.

“You need to eat again,” Sam finally said.

“I’m fine. Just stop getting near me,” Dean said, talking over Sam. He crouched in the corner, then abruptly banged his head against the window so hard Sam was surprised it didn’t crack. Dean sank back down and closed his eyes again. “How long till I can kill something?

Sam checked the clock and the odometer. “Forty minutes, give or take ten.”

“Jesus.”

“I’ll wake you…” But when Sam looked over, Dean was out cold. Actually, out dead might have been a better description. He looked exactly as he had yesterday, when he’d really been…Sam turned around and pressed down the accelerator. He wasn’t going to think about that.

* * *

Definitely not a nice house, Sam thought. He could believe that it’d have a ghost that went around hanging girls…except for the fact that he wasn’t picking up one damn stray signal. “Well, they nailed the description, but I’m not really getting anything…Dean?”

“Hang on a second.” The moment they’d gotten something to work on, Dean had turned into super-hunter, all furrowed brow and intense concentration. Right now he was pacing around the room for the fifth time, staring at that one symbol.

He wasn’t going to be listening any time soon, so Sam gave up and went over to one of the boarded-up windows. Everything looked the part, but…something was off, and not just the lack of phenomena. Something was niggling at the back of his head, gnawing at him, and it was driving him crazy.

“Hey. Listen, that…do you think we’d have to go back? Since it’s not your usual Dracula kind of monster,” Dean suddenly said.

It took a few moments for Sam to figure out what Dean was asking about. “Nah. The stake is one of the oldest pieces of all the folklore out there—cropped up before holy water and crucifixes. That one’s dead.”

“Too bad. Wouldn’t have minded another go at it.” Dean abruptly swiveled, then walked out into the front room. When Sam followed, he found Dean staring at yet another symbol.

It was the curly one, and come to think of it, that was what was bugging Sam. He had the feeling he’d seen it before, but he knew he hadn’t—no, it was more like he had the feeling he should know it.

“I know I’ve seen that other one somewhere else, but _this_ one’s just pinging in my head. It’s like the damn thing’s talking to me,” Dean muttered. He crossed his arms over his chest and frowned at it. Then he started to say something else, but abruptly clammed up. His shoulders hitched up and stayed there, so tense Sam could practically see the muscles popping beneath the leather coat. “Listen, Sam. About my personal space…”

“Sorry, didn’t notice I was doing that.” Sam backed off, mentally kicking himself. Who would’ve guessed how hard it was to stay five feet from Dean till now? Had they always been getting up into each other before?

Dean shrugged off Sam’s apology and wandered back into the other room. “All right, basement’s this way, I’m guessing…and hey. Sam. Company.”

The way Dean’s voice tightened up made Sam jump to attention. He slid out his gun and went after; he wasn’t going to leave Dean’s back uncovered again.

* * *

“So you could smell them?” Sam asked, swinging his bag onto the twin bed closer to the door.

The bathroom light clicked on and Sam had the oddest sense of déjà vu, even though he was standing and the other light was on, too. He gave himself a sharp shake and sat down on the bed. He was just getting his laptop set up when Dean came back out.

Dean had looked a little better once Sam had roused him out of his coma of a nap, but that slight improvement had completely disappeared and then some. Though Dean was making a valiant effort to cover that up with a mocking look. “Dude, a noseless guy could’ve smelled them. They must live on nothing but Cheetos and Coke.”

“Yeah, I noticed. Once I was in the same room as them.” The laptop beeped and Sam glanced down, then decided that had to wait a second. He slid the laptop onto the bed, then got up. “You know, if there was a beauty contest between Mordecai and you right now, I think Mordecai would win.”

“I’m fine—Sam, get back. Don’t—get the hell back, damn it!” Dean snapped. He backed up just as far as Sam went forward till he hit the drawer set between the two beds. His elbow caught the lamp and he jerked around to look at it, then turned back with gun out. The gun was shaking so much it could’ve served as a grandfather clock’s pendulum, and above it Dean’s eyes were wide and panicky. “I’m _fine_.”

Sam raised an eyebrow. It was a good thing they were naturally so snippy with each other, since that meant he could do it on autopilot while the rest of his mind worked on not freaking out. “That’s really not going to help, Dean. One, you aren’t going to kill me.”

“I could kneecap your stupid ass,” Dean unsteadily said.

“Then I’d be bleeding,” Sam pointed out. He kind of wished he hadn’t, because Dean’s pupils flared and his whole body went so tense Sam could practically hear the twanging. “Two, you can’t go out like this, let alone take on some psycho farmer ghost. You’re going to pass out any minute now.”

Dean considered this. Then he sighed and tossed the gun onto the bed. “Okay—”

And then he jumped over the goddamn bed. Sam didn’t know whether to be shocked that Dean would actually _do_ that to get away, impressed and worried that Dean had managed that without apparently trying hard, or to laugh like a hysterical moron because Dean had fucked up the landing and ended up stumbling into the wall. But then Dean couldn’t quite get up; he fell back to one knee and his hand went out to claw uselessly at the wall. So Sam went with getting around the bed fast and grabbing Dean beneath the arms.

He was trying to pull Dean back onto his feet when Dean suddenly _twisted_ \--

\--and froze, mouth about an inch away from the Band-Aid Sam had slapped on his neck. His hands had landed on Sam’s arms and slowly flexed, curling slightly so his nails scratched through Sam’s shirt. Sam was looking at Dean’s ear and the tiny cloth bag he was cupping in his palm so it was a hair away from touching Dean’s jaw. The ear was trembling, and in front of it a trickle of sweat had started to run.

“Sam, I can’t do this,” Dean whispered. He jerked forward a little bit, stopping just barely far enough away to keep Sam from having to burn him again. His left knee was pinned behind Sam’s legs, but his right was still pretty free and it rubbed up and down the side of Sam’s leg, like he was scratching an itch for Sam. “I can’t—be this—this _thing_ \--”

“You’re not. It’s just temporary. I swear to God, we’re going to fix it. But that’s only going to happen if you stay alive till I figure out something.” If Dean died…for good…then Sam didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t go to Dad and look at the man, and he couldn’t go back to whatever semblance of a normal life he’d be able to scrape up under that kind of cloud. “Look, I’ve got the angelica, and we know that works. You’re not going to take too much. I can keep you from doing that if I have to.”

Dean made a strange, rasping, hollow kind of sound. After a moment, Sam realized it was supposed to be laughter. “It’s not just _that_. You noticed—you noticed what else happened last time. And it’s still got me. I can’t—you’re my brother, damn it. You’re my brother and I can’t _make it stop_.”

He ended on a half-hiss, half-whine that coiled around Sam’s ear and tickled where it should have cut, and cut where it should have tickled. His right knee slid up, then back so if Sam wanted to keep Dean pinned, he had to shift forward so they were pressing against each other from thighs to shoulders. He felt Dean move his hips and edged the angelica that much closer; Dean flinched away, then plastered himself as far back against the wall as he could without actually melding with it. The space that opened up between them still wasn’t enough to keep Sam from feeling exactly what Dean meant.

“Get off me,” Dean weakly said.

“Not until you have something. A mouthful. You’re having a mouthful, and then I’m going to get off. And I can shower—” Sam’s tongue briefly got stuck around that word “—while you do some more research on that one symbol. The one that was ‘pinging’ at you.”

Dean sucked in his breath and squeezed Sam’s arms so hard that Sam’s hands started to go numb. He bent slightly so he was turning into the hand Sam still had shoved against his side, then shuddered. “Shit. Not on the neck again. People were calling you on it all day, and besides, it’s way too cliché,” he muttered, voice cracking a couple times.

“Okay. Then move your head so I can get my wrist around—”

The headshake Sam got was so violent he almost lost his grip on Dean’s jaw. “Like hell. Anywhere near your hand’s going to weaken your gun-grip and your punch. Which sucks to begin with.”

Sam was sorely tempted to head-butt Dean for a moment, coping mechanism or no coping mechanism. “Femoral artery out too, I guess?”

“I’m not carrying you around, Sammy. Not unless you put on the dress and heels, too,” Dean snorted. He was still forcing it, and badly, too.

“Shoulder,” Sam snapped. He waited for Dean to come up to an objection to that as well.

Instead, Dean sharply drew in his breath again. He leaned forward, hesitated, and then Sam felt his lips; they were cracked and rough. Dean pushed at Sam’s collar, working the fabric till he could get under it. His hips moved slightly sideways, then back, and his hands curled around so they were cradling Sam’s elbows instead of gripping the biceps. He bit down.

He was off almost at once, apparently taking Sam’s comment at face-value. Dean shoved himself back into the wall and pushed Sam the opposite way so Sam had to scramble to stay on his feet.

“Okay. That’s—that’s good,” Dean said. His voice was tight and he’d dropped to the floor so he was turned away from Sam. His hands were digging into the carpet so hard that he was pulling it off the floorboards a little.

It obviously wasn’t good, but Sam decided not to push the issue right now. Frankly, he wasn’t feeling too steady himself: when Dean had bitten down, he’d moved up against Sam and his…

“I’m…just going to the shower now.” Sam eased towards that direction. He waited for a reaction from Dean, didn’t get one, and finally took the last two steps.

He had to turn slightly to open the door, but he only looked away for a second. Nevertheless, when his gaze landed on Dean again, the other man had changed position to sit in a dazed heap. Dean slowly lifted his hand and wiped off his mouth, then stared at his bloody fingers. He grimaced as his hand jerked back up, almost as if it was acting on its own, and shoved his fingers in his mouth. His other hand dropped to his fly, and at that point, Sam damn near jumped into the bathroom.

He’d slammed the door before he’d realized what he was doing. Sam winced and slumped over the sink, then slowly bent down to splash his face a couple times. His shoulder twinged and he absently touched it. Froze. Very slowly brought his hand around to look at it.

There was blood on it, but not much, and Sam had felt a scab already forming over the area. The victims of the other vampire had all been written off as bizarre animal attacks because of their savaged throats, but Dean was managing to avoid that. But the other…Jesus Christ. Some days Sam wondered if the family problem was a real, genuine curse.

It wasn’t Dean’s fault, Sam reminded himself. He couldn’t help it. He…Sam cut off that line of thought. He was starting to hear noises outside and he moved quickly to the shower, twisting on the water. The sound of that covered up the other sounds pretty well. He just wished he had something to do the same for his imagination.


	3. Double-Edged

The ax whistled past Sam’s head, so close its blade shaved the lint off his shirt as he frantically twisted away. He dropped and rolled, coming up by the doorway to the next room. In the background he heard the ghost-hunters shrieking and running around—the one with glasses almost stomped on Sam’s hand as he ran towards the back of the house—but he couldn’t hear Dean. Sam jerked back, then threw himself to the side as the ax splintered up the floor where he’d just been. “Dean? Any new ideas?”

“Working on it—Jesus!” The floorboards rattled and bounced as Dean dove away from Murdoch. He dropped like he was going to roll, then abruptly…he did something that put him behind Murdoch. The in-between stuff had been too fast for Sam to see.

Dean launched himself onto Murdoch’s back, but got shaken off almost immediately. Murdoch whipped around too fast for Dean to get back on and took a swing that came within a hair of cutting Dean on the diagonal. Maybe—Dean had that look on his face, the one that said “I’m totally in control of the situation, asshole.” He easily danced back from the blow, then ducked under—too fast again—and shot Murdoch at point-blank range.

“Those don’t work!” Sam yelled.

“I noticed! Burn the house!” The bullets had forced Murdoch to temporarily dissolve, and when he materialized again…okay, he always popped up in the same stance, which meant Dean could intercept his first swing, grab the ax-handle and use Murdoch’s momentum to sling him across the room. Not such a stupid tactic, even if it sucked as a strategy.

Well, except Murdoch had superhuman strength too and managed to stay on his feet. He spun to a stop, then abruptly reversed direction to come at Sam. His rush was so sudden that Sam couldn’t get out of the way in time and ended up being forced into a narrow back-passage.

“Never mind, I’ll do it! Keep him busy!” Dean called.

Keep him busy. Right. The thought clattered right out of Sam’s brain the moment Murdoch slammed him up against the wall and started trying to choke him with the ax-handle. He just tried to stay alive. But Murdoch was much, much stronger, and the handle was pressing harder against Sam’s throat. His arm muscles were getting wrung out from the effort of resisting, but every breath that managed to squeeze past the ax brought in less air than the one before it. His vision started to go black with pretty flickers at the edges.

Then Murdoch abruptly dropped back. Vanished, which left Sam falling to the floor in a coughing heap. He made himself keep moving and crawled, then stumbled his way into the front rooms, rubbing at his throat. The flickers actually were real, because Dean actually had set the place on fire. The house was all wood that’d been sitting out and getting beaten on for years, and it was going up like it was made of paper.

Sam bumped up against a wall, then pushed himself off. He put up his arm in front of his nose and mouth, trying not to inhale. Smoke had filled the room and he couldn’t…something silver flashed up in the air, and Dean shouted, “Sam!”

This time Sam didn’t even have time to build up enough rage. He just thought _No_ and suddenly his head exploded.

So did the house. At least, that was what all the flying pieces of flaming wood made it seem like. Cursing and coughing, Sam ducked as close as he could to the floor and made for what he thought was the front door. Something grabbed him and he almost punched it before Dean’s face hazily emerged from the smoke.

Dean dragged them outside, where to Sam’s surprise, he found that the house was still standing. It wasn’t going to be for much longer, with the way the fire was going. “What about—” Sam started, and then had to stop to cough.

“Running for their car,” Dean hoarsely said. He dropped Sam’s arm and reached around to grab at his shoulder. His wince caught Sam’s attention and Sam started to turn, only to be startled back by a loud crash.

Murdoch had barged his way to the front door and now stood in it while flames licked up all around him. The ax was lying against his shoulder and on his face was a vicious snarl. But it wasn’t mindless; Sam could almost hear the son of a bitch mocking them in his head. “Burn the house?”

“Well, legend says he haunts the house, so if there’s no house, there’s no ghost?” Dean offered. He sounded faintly sheepish beneath his nervous jokiness. He was still clutching his shoulder.

As if reading Sam’s mind, Murdoch glanced towards Dean. The psycho farmer’s lip lifted—or maybe it was a trick of the light and shadows, but that didn’t occur to Sam till after Murdoch had gone falling back into the fire. Sam grimaced and pressed the heel of his hand to his temple. The headache was awful, but he still felt a grim satisfaction. “Bastard. I hope that keeps the legend from changing anymore.”

“What? What did you—did you just do something? Because that wasn’t the same as before,” Dean said. He turned on Sam with a wary, worried look and the light from the fire pointed up a wet patch on his shirt that was spreading from beneath the hand he had clapped on it.

Dean noticed Sam looking and started to step back. He stumbled on something and barely swayed his way back to upright. And when Sam grabbed his arm, he couldn’t even pull away. Dark as it was out here, his deep sickly pallor couldn’t be missed.

“All right, I let you pretend you were fine for two nights now, but not this time,” Sam snarled beneath his breath. He fought Dean’s attempts to pull free and dragged them towards the car. “You need to drink again.”

“Goddamn it, Sam, I did. I already had my daily moment of hell today, all right? You should know—you were there holding my head in it.” The next try Dean made nearly sent them headfirst into a bush. He couldn’t have righted himself if Sam hadn’t been holding onto him, but did he stop being an idiot? No, he just tried to drive his shoulder into Sam and ended up jarring whatever Murdoch had done to his other shoulder; Dean hissed and temporarily stopped fighting.

Sam concentrated on estimating how far to the car, and then how far to the motel. He wanted to look at Dean’s injury, but didn’t dare stop to waste the time. “You couldn’t raise a baby vampire bunny on how much you took. You can’t live on that, Dean.”

“I’m not living! I’m dead! I’m dead and I’m a goddamn monster and I shouldn’t _be_ living, damn it!” Dean snapped. Then he suddenly stopped. Just planted his heels in the ground so Sam’s momentum jerked his hand off of Dean.

As soon as Sam felt his grip go, he was slewing himself around. He briefly thought about the ghost-hunters, then said to hell to them. And to the cops. If they were still in hearing distance, then they could just find out what it was _really_ like. “I’m not going over this again.”

“Yeah?” Dean threw up his head, then stepped back. His eyes narrowed and his voice dropped, got a little steadier. The desperation and self-hatred and resentment were still lurking around his face, though. “What did you do back there, Sam? One moment Murdoch’s going to take my head and the next he’s not. He’s a—not even a ghost, he’s a thought, and you can’t toss those around like…I don’t know, me when I’m out of it. How do you know it’s not coming back?”

“I—this has nothing to do with—”

“Answer the goddamn question or I’m just going to toss myself into that damn ravine and see how good my chances are of falling on a sharp stick,” Dean hissed. His teeth snapped together on the last word so hard they clicked. He worked his jaw for a moment, staring hotly at Sam.

To be honest, Sam genuinely didn’t have a good answer. To be even more honest, he’d been basically ignoring all of weirdness with himself in favor of feverish research on Dean’s problem. He hadn’t mentioned it to Dean yet because he still needed to track down a couple references, but he thought he’d nearly gotten a ritual cobbled together.

A twig cracked as Dean shifted his weight and Sam almost panicked. He’d almost panicked so many damn times in the last few days that each time he managed to avert a disaster, his shock at himself got bigger. It had to be about the size of Los Angeles now.

Dean had frozen and his expression had changed—he’d looked scared and surprised for a moment. But then he’d jerked his head around, like he was working a cramp out of his neck, and leveled a steady gaze at Sam again. “Were you just going to do something?”

“I don’t—maybe. I don’t know, because I’ve had some other things to worry about lately,” Sam finally said. He sounded annoyed. Well, he was annoyed, and getting anxious about that dark stain on Dean’s shirt and the way Dean was squeezing the hand he had on his shoulder. “I don’t know how I knew about Murdoch. Why don’t you tell me what the hell’s up with your boner issue and I’ll—fuck. Fuck—Dean, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that—it just—”

The moment those goddamn stupid words had come out, Dean had gone white as the moon above them. He flinched back, then glanced from side-to-side like he was about to bolt. When Sam reached for him, he flinched again and actually made an aborted lunge to the left before he settled down. He stared at a point over Sam’s left shoulder and took a long, deep breath.

“We should go. The police’ll be back around soon,” Sam hesitantly said.

“Yeah.” Dean slowly rose up on his toes, then swung heavily into a step towards Sam. He still wasn’t looking at Sam, and he didn’t as he walked around Sam and off towards the car.

Well, they both felt like shit now. Sam glanced at the burning house one last time, then trailed after Dean.

* * *

Something fell on the floor again and Dean cursed for nearly a minute. After clatter number twenty-five, Sam had stopped counting. Once he’d actually gotten up from the bed and begun to go towards the bathroom door, but then he’d thought better of it. He’d just sat there and researched and cringed every time Dean had fumbled something.

The door hinges creaked and Sam looked up to see Dean make a valiant effort not to stagger out of the bathroom. He’d changed his jeans, but probably had run out of energy when it came to putting on his shirt. The bandage over his shoulder was puckered and awkwardly taped in place…Sam glanced at Dean’s face and found a defensive glare.

Dean sat down on the other bed, facing Sam, which was closer than he’d come of his own accord in a couple days. He drummed his fingers on his knees, then reached for the set of cuffs on the table.

Sam suddenly remembered and swiped them before Dean could get to them. “We can’t use those anymore. They’re steel—not as bad as wrought or cast iron, but it’s still bad enough to keep your wrists from healing.”

“I’m not risking you sleeping and me being up without those,” Dean replied. He was a little less forceful about it than usual, like his mind was on something. His hands absently twisted so they covered the dark purplish rings on his wrists, which had never really gone away.

“If you had a half-decent meal, you’d probably be okay. You’re less edgy after you’ve had some—you don’t seem to notice me as much.” When Sam pulled it out of his pocket, the bag of angelica smelled less pungent than usual. He’d have to make up a new one in about a week, he figured.

The bag caught Dean’s attention, too. He stared at it for nearly a minute. A warm, sluggish feeling started to spread through Sam’s hand, making its muscles lax and loose, and he hastily pulled it behind his hip. With a grimace, Dean shook himself out of it. “Sorry.”

“And when you’re really hungry, you do that more and you know, it’s not that easy to fight it off,” Sam said, edging his words with a little sharpness. “I get tired.”

“Yeah, well—” Dean cut himself off with a curt jerk of his head. He looked down at his hands, watched his fingers knot hard around each other. “You want me to have a good meal and you’d have to put up with more than biting. I think—if I try not to do anything else, it doesn’t taste as…filling as the first time. It doesn’t last as long, either.”

He glanced up then to see how Sam was taking it. Sam wasn’t really taking it. And then the meaning of Dean’s words really hit, and Sam was glad he had his notes to stare at instead of Dean. “Makes sense. Not all vampires live off of blood. Some seem to feed off just emotions—they end up causing depression and suicidal thoughts.”

“Makes sense,” Dean incredulously repeated. “I can’t believe you—do you understand at all what I’m saying?”

“I understand that you need to get off _on_ sucking blood,” Sam snapped. He was bringing up his papers to slap himself in the face before he’d even finished. It just seemed like his mouth was going off on its own. “God. I didn’t mean that, Dean.”

“Well, that’s basically it,” was Dean’s surprising answer. His voice was shaking. When Sam looked up at him again, he was rubbing at his wrists harder and harder. He glanced at Sam, then away, then up again. “That’s what it would take.”

For a good few minutes they just stared at each other. Dean looked revolted and sorry and angry, and beneath all of that, he was pleading a little bit with his eyes. Or whatever was driving his abnormal appetites was pleading. Sam felt a headache coming on. Actually, that wasn’t accurate, but the headache was easier to accept than the nausea or the rationale that was already forming in his mind or any of the other things. “Okay.”

“ _What_?” Dean hissed.

“I’m not letting you die. And it’s not really about me, is it? It’s just staying alive till I finish putting together this deal I was telling you about on the way back,” Sam said. He was speaking very fast and very low and he sounded nervous as hell. Which he was. He felt intermittently lightheaded, like his mind was trying to space out on him. “It’s the same as crawling around in disgusting sewers and digging up dead bodies. It’s just something we’ve got to do. Right?”

Dean didn’t immediately respond. He looked away again. “Damned if I’m going to maul somebody else for a comparison,” he finally replied. “I can’t believe you’re agreeing. I can’t believe you’d go that far.”

“I’m not going to watch you die. I’ll do whatever it takes.” Sam was getting tired of having to say that, but every time he actually did say it, it felt like the first time with all the dizzy black fear crowding up around him.

Some of that must’ve gotten through to Dean this time, because he looked at Sam like he was feeling the same thing. “That’s what’s starting to scare me.” Odd comment, but he went on before Sam could call him on it. “All right. If we’re…if we’re going to do this, it’ll be a lot more blood. I don’t want to take it from anywhere that’ll leave you too handicapped—and you were with the shoulder. You were _incredibly_ bad with Murdoch.”

“Well, that rules out most of my body, doesn’t it? Where were you thinking of?” Sam irritably asked. “My ear? Not enough blood vessels. My—”

“The other thing—I’m not doing it again till I know I won’t turn you into a vampire, too. That thing bit me on the tongue…but that can’t be all it takes,” Dean said. He stared at his hands again.

Sam needed more than a moment to take that in. He swallowed hard and didn’t object when his mind snatched on a random detail. “It’s usually not just a bite that’ll do it. Anything else happen right afterward?”

“Well, I slashed his face with my hunting knife and he bled all over—got a lot of that in my mouth. Disgusting. Then he shoved me face-first into his grave-dirt and tried to take me down with him, which was how I knew where the bastard was hiding.” Dean made it sound like the whole thing had been a particularly nasty schoolyard fight. And he’d been calling Sam on being too nonchalant.

“Classic old-school. It was the bite, the grave-dirt _and_ the vampire blood. You didn’t get buried, so you actually might not be able to turn somebody else into a vampire at all. Ever,” Sam noted.

Strangely enough, Dean didn’t seem the least bit relieved by that. Instead he was looking at Sam as if they were meeting for the first time and he was getting creeped out by what he saw. “Do you _want_ to do this?”

Sam couldn’t answer for a moment. He looked down at his notes and saw that they were a mess, with corners sticking out in all directions. He started shuffling them together, but the sheets stuck to each other and wouldn’t slide, which was frustrating as hell. “No, I don’t, and you know that. But what I don’t want even more is—”

“No.” Dean rocked back to shoot Sam one of his don’t-argue-I’m-older looks, then leaned forward to slap his hands on his knees. He didn’t quite hide his flinch, and he definitely didn’t hide the way he went grey in the face. “No. We’re not doing this. I’m not going to do this to you. I’ve spent my whole life trying to keep this kind of thing from happening, and I’m not—”

He stood up and Sam stood up. “Well, I’m really sorry, Dean, but this isn’t completely your decision—”

“It’s _my_ life!” Dean suddenly shouted, spinning around. He threw up his hands and nearly hit Sam in the face. “And I don’t want—”

“It was my life with Jessica in Stanford!” Sam snapped back. He twisted out of the way of Dean’s arm, then stepped forward and started to grab for Dean’s arm. “You think you’re the only one in this family that’s ever had to adjust to a bad situation?”

“A—a ‘bad’ situation? Oh, my God…you could’ve went! I said you could go! You chose to stay! But this—this is so much worse and you’re just—just saying I have to go along with it. I don’t see—” Dean cut himself off and turned sharply on his heel. Too sharply. He overbalanced, then swung too far the other way in trying to correct for it so Sam’s outstretched hand smacked his bandaged shoulder.

There wasn’t even a hiss or a wince; Dean just crumpled. He belatedly attempted to catch himself and his arm flailed up. Sam grabbed his elbow, but instead of pulling back, Dean threw his weight down so he ended up spinning half-around towards Sam. His knee whacked into the side of Sam’s leg and knocked it out from under Sam. And then it all was a rush of limbs and snarling and desperate fighting. The bag of angelica vanished and Sam didn’t have the time to find it; he just grabbed and shoved and jerked up his knees at whatever came near him.

Sam had the impression that something damp and sharp just grazed his neck a second before they managed to get hold of themselves. He was still reacting and slammed at whatever body part he was holding onto, which turned out to be Dean’s shoulders. They both winced, and Dean promptly went limp beneath Sam. His whole face was a sick grey and it took him several moments to stop gasping enough to be capable of talking.

“Oh, Christ,” he muttered. His head lolled to the side and his eyes closed; his right hand came up to brush against Sam’s side before he abruptly slapped it back against the floor. “Sam, get off. Now.”

“Dean, you’re right. This is worse. But you know something?” Sam said. His voice was jittering all over the place, and apparently he’d decided to do all the shaking since Dean was obviously too weak for it. “It’s _worse_. If you die—if you die, then what the hell am I supposed to do? I didn’t stay because I think it’s my duty to get killed chasing down every damn monster in the world. I stayed because I thought what we were doing wasn’t over yet. And you dead sure as _hell_ isn’t going to end it, only what do I do then? Call Dad? Don’t even go there.”

Something about that got through to Dean, because he went very still. Then he suddenly jerked his head around and stared up at Sam so hard that his gaze damn near stabbed out through the back of Sam’s skull. “What would you do? Sue-Ellen bound a Reaper to save Roy—would you go that far?”

“You know what?” Sam could see the strength of his grip was hurting Dean, but he couldn’t make himself loosen up. And his voice was winding tighter and tighter as well so its shakiness was now tremors. He wasn’t sure if that was still due to fear, or if rage was getting in there as well. “I don’t know. I really don’t know. I’m feeling a lot more sympathy for her right now. You know something else? Maybe it wasn’t fair, but I don’t regret at all that you got to get saved that time and Layla didn’t.”

“Jesus,” Dean repeated. Very softly, while he stared up at Sam with wide-eyed shock.

If there was something else to say, Sam didn’t know what it was and Dean apparently wasn’t going to say it. There probably was—there had to be, considering the level of tension, whining and high, that was still in the air.

The change came on so gradually that Sam couldn’t pinpoint where it began. Their bout of wrestling had left both of them with a sheen of sweat, but that had been all due to motion and not to the actual temperature of the room; now the place seemed to be warming up to match. Dean’s breathing slowed down and the way he was looking at Sam…it twisted, distorted. He tilted his head a little and that exactly fit the off-kilter feel of his gaze. It wasn’t so much that he stopped caring when this came on, Sam realized. It was that that got warped, and not enough so that Sam—or Dean, probably—could pretend it was something completely different.

“Sam,” Dean said in a thick voice. “I—”

“It’s temporary. And I can deal.” Sam shifted so he could get his knees off Dean and onto the floor. His shirt slid up as Dean lifted one knee past his side, then worked back down. He finally got his hands off Dean’s shoulders, pushing one between Dean’s ribs and arm and using the other to hold Dean’s good arm down. “You need it.”

Dean closed his eyes like he was wincing. He opened them again and his lips parted slightly so Sam got a glimpse of long canines. His hips rocked up and Sam froze, which in turn made Dean go stiff. Cursing to himself, Sam set his teeth and slowly leaned over. No good, because Dean just tried to grind his head into the floor.

He’d told Dean he’d do this, and he wasn’t going to prove himself a liar and a coward, especially now. Sam sucked in his breath, rolled his shoulders, and pulled the hand he’d had on the floor back onto Dean. He had a temporary attack of nerves and had to stop, then forced himself to drag his hand over Dean’s stomach.

The pupils of Dean’s eyes widened till only the barest sliver of color ringed them. He hissed out a breath. His hand bumped Sam’s side again, then lifted to brush over the back of Sam’s head. Then his fingers curled and his nails sank in, dragging Sam down so fast that his surprised gasp ended up in Dean’s mouth.

That made it easy for Dean to latch onto Sam’s tongue, and shock basically kept Sam from flinching away because damned if it still didn’t hurt like hell. A little less than the other times—a very little less, barely enough for him to concentrate on pushing his hand lower. His fingertips ran up against the side of the low ridge that was stretching up Dean’s jeans, and—and Sam was trying to pretend it was just him being a horny, lonely teenager again, but Dean was rubbing up against him and sucking on his tongue so the pain got pulled into a thin, singing thread that kept cutting up Sam’s thoughts. Dean was starting to moan, pulling at the arm Sam still was pinning down.

He was drawing blood more slowly, too. This was going to take much longer, Sam realized, and right then he nearly jumped off and ran for the car. But it’d have to if Dean was going to survive. It’d—Sam would have gritted his teeth if Dean hadn’t been pushing his tongue up against them. He had to do without as he pushed his hand completely between Dean’s legs, fumbling around for the fly-button and then for the zipper.

Air, or lack thereof, was just starting to become a problem when Dean unexpectedly moved back, shifting his mouth from Sam’s throbbing tongue to Sam’s lower lip. His hips were jerking up and down, and sometimes sideways so Sam’s fingers slid beneath all the clothes and hit really warm flesh. Hot flesh—he really hadn’t been ready for that, or for how Dean suddenly shoved upward so he jarred open Sam’s mouth. Fresh pain sliced over Sam’s tongue and he let out a muffled cry. He felt Dean flinch, but Dean didn’t stop drinking, or moving so his…Sam curled his fingers around it more to keep the dampness at the tip from hitting his palm again than because he was…but he should be doing that anyway. That’d finish things faster.

Dean scraped his nails over Sam’s scalp and down to gouge at the back of Sam’s neck. He was twisting around harder, pushing himself up so hard that he almost knocked Sam off a few times. Sam was vaguely thankful for the cloudiness of deep shock and tried to keep up, then overtake the loose rhythm Dean was setting up. Then Dean would catch up, and then Sam would have to speed up, and they traded first place a couple times before Dean suddenly stiffened; Sam was blackly impressed at how he swung himself sideways so the only stickiness that caught him was on the hand. At least he wouldn’t have to spend the night scrubbing at his jeans.

A deep wrench caught Sam in the gut, then ripped up and out of him. He fell forward and barely caught himself on his elbow, and for several seconds he was too dizzy to see properly.

With a long sigh, Dean slumped back to the floor. His lips slowly pulled off Sam’s tongue, dragged over Sam’s bottom lip, and then he was down and Sam was rolling himself to the side.

The nightstand between the beds had a box of tissues on it, so Sam hauled himself over and did a shitty job of wiping off his hand. He went for a second tissue and ended up with five, which was actually fine. He probably was going to need those, anyway.

Dean had turned on his side in the direction that Sam had moved, curling up so Sam couldn’t see his face or anything between his knees and belly. There was the sound of a zipper, and then Dean awkwardly pushed himself up against one of the beds. He almost looked like he had a tan again, and all the visible injuries he’d had before were gone. After a long, ragged, breath, he reached up and pulled the bandage off his shoulder: that was healed, too. He used it to mope up the splatters that hadn’t hit Sam’s hand.

“You look a lot better,” Sam said. Tried to say, anyway. His tongue had gotten partially healed so it wasn’t bleeding now, but it was still pretty sore. It also was a bad idea to move too fast, he found out. He probably wasn’t going to pass out, but he did feel pretty anemic.

“Funny. I feel a lot worse,” Dean replied. He shot a resentful, remorseful look at Sam before abruptly getting to his feet and walking over to their bags. “So how far are you with this cure?”

Sam swallowed till he couldn’t taste copper anymore. “Pretty far. I think I’ve got all the leads I need, so it’s just getting the time to put together every—”

“We can make the time. We don’t have anything outstanding right now, and anyway, this is more important. Fill me in.” Dean turned around with a gunkit in one hand and their rifles tucked under his other arm. He carried those over to his bed and started breaking them down.

“Yeah, sure. I’ve—I’m just going to wash my hand first,” Sam awkwardly finished. He never should have started that sentence.

But it was out there. Dean went still, then jerked himself over into a tight hunch. He nodded without a word.

They weren’t going to talk about it. Well, for once Sam was fine with that. He started towards the bathroom, then turned back to pick the tissues he’d used out of the trashcan. If Dean could smell what people had eaten, he’d be able to smell that. And anyway, Sam would know those were still in the room. He’d flush them down the toilet.


	4. Worse Than the Disease

Dean abruptly cut himself off. He stumbled slightly and Sam automatically reached out, but Dean twisted away. A second later, he looked fine again. “Think we just went over a really big sewer,” he mumbled, glancing over his shoulder.

Well, this was a pretty good-sized college campus, so that didn’t surprise Sam. It did make him kick himself for not thinking about that before. “Crap. There are sewer lines and plumbing all over the place—are you going to be okay?”

“I’m sure as hell not moving out to the backwoods and doing without the comforts of modern civilization. I’m already giving up enough.” A couple of girls passed them as they started up the library steps, staring and giggling at Dean. Before, he would’ve been all over that, but now he turned his shoulder to it. The muscle in his jaw flexed. “Anyway, I haven’t exactly been collapsing all over the place, have I? And I can still take showers, too. It probably depends on how much water we’re talking about, like how I can still hold a gun as long as I’m not doing it for a half-hour.”

“Yeah…are you sure you’re okay? You keep looking like you’ve got the stomach flu,” Sam asked.

Shrugging, Dean made a face and shouldered past Sam to open the door. Some of the tension went out of him once they were inside. “It’s too sunny out.”

“You weren’t even getting sunburned. Which is pretty surprising, considering how pale you are now.” The wall immediately to their left had a bunch of plastic boxes holding flyers, one of which seemed to be a list of call numbers. Sam turned to it and started pulling out papers; he didn’t really want to spend a lot of time trying to find one book. They still had a lot of shopping to do.

And Dean needed to eat soon. He’d claimed that the feed right after they’d dealt with Murdoch had gotten him set, but it was the third day since and he hadn’t had anything in between. Sometime yesterday night he’d lost his tan again and right now he was flicking sidelong glances at Sam’s neck when he thought Sam wasn’t looking. Well, when he wasn’t being elaborately careful about following the five-feet rule.

“No, I’m not, and thank God for that. But doesn’t mean I like it—it makes me feel like—” Dean yawned loudly “—somebody’s waiting around the next corner to jump me.”

Sam looked over and caught Dean in the middle of another yawn. He raised an eyebrow. “Like a pillow?”

“Shut up. You slept all the way here,” Dean muttered, turning away. Something on the wall got his attention and he walked around to get a better look. Then he spun around so violently that his shoes screeched on the linoleum and everyone in the lobby jumped about to stare at him. Either Dean didn’t notice or he didn’t care, because he just stalked off.

It was a flyer for a blood drive happening somewhere on campus. Wincing himself, Sam hurriedly found the sheet that had a map of the library on it and went after Dean.

He didn’t have to go too far; Dean had stopped in a window-filled passage that let light blaze across the ends of the bookshelves. He looked up when Sam got near, but didn’t stop kicking at the nearest bookshelf, which was starting to rattle.

“Come on. It’ll be on the second floor,” Sam said. When Dean didn’t immediately move, Sam made a grab for him.

That did the trick, even if it did nothing to improve Dean’s mood. His face was stormy and he gave Sam the silent treatment all the way up the stairs and well into the books. Thankfully, the section they were headed for didn’t seem that popular.

Sam found the right aisle and started down it, then stopped. He turned around to face Dean, who was hanging back and eying a nearby sofa. “All right, what happened? We go through all the trouble of finding a blood bank that isn’t in the middle of a hospital so nobody’ll be around at night, and then you—”

“Didn’t work,” Dean curtly replied. He leaned against the shelf and shoved his hands in his pockets. After a moment, he glanced irritably at Sam. “What?”

“Goddamn it, Dean.” He was not pulling this shit again. Not if Sam could help it. There was already so much going on that they just couldn’t talk about if they wanted to stay sane without Dean adding whatever he felt like to that list. “Why not?”

The side of Dean’s upper lip curled slightly. Then he pressed his lips together, pulling his shoulders into a tense crouch. A second later, Sam’s ears were ringing and he was staring at the bookshelf behind him, which was teetering an alarming amount from the kick Dean had given it.

“Well, first off, it took me forever to find a pack that had whole blood in it—” Dean started. He talked fast and with an edgy, false cheerfulness that grated on Sam’s nerves.

“Shit. Right, they usually store the cells and plasma separately. I forgot about that.” It was easier to handle that way, but obviously Dean couldn’t drink it in that form.

“And then—and then I don’t know. I really, really goddamn don’t know, like everything else that’s part of this mess. But I smelled it and it wasn’t going to do any good. It was-- _dead_.” Dean let out a shrill, sarcastic chuckle. “But let me guess—that’s for the best anyway. I read one of their info posters while I was in there and you can’t let the temperature change much when you’re refrigerating blood. Can’t really do that with a portable cooler…not for that long, anyway, and if we got hung up on something way out in the hills for a couple days, then I’m _still_ screwed.”

Another problem would have been getting the blood in the first place, considering the kind of trouble they already had with keeping their police records short. Not to mention that blood banks and hospitals were mainly in suburban and urban areas, which wasn’t where they spent a lot of their time. But Sam had been hoping they could have that option as a kind of stop-gap measure, at least. He still didn’t feel completely recovered from all the blood—and whatever else—Dean had taken last time.

“Maybe I should start hoping we run into more people like those hunter psychos,” Dean finished. He made a noise that sounded like somebody had flayed the skin off a laugh. His hands came up to press against his face. Then he dropped them, and gave the shelf a last kick as he spun to put his back to Sam. “Going to hit the couch now. Have fun with your books, Sammy.”

Sam opened his mouth, then closed it. When Dean was in that kind of mood, there wasn’t any point. Anyway, Sam wouldn’t have known what to say without sounding stupid, naïve or some deliberate combination of the two.

He did poke his head out about a minute later to make sure Dean had gone to sleep before he went off in search of the book. Once Dean was out, he was out cold for a few hours, minimum. The handcuffs really weren’t necessary at that point, and the major worry Sam had actually was that somebody would look too close, find out that Dean’s breathing became so shallow he basically wasn’t and draw the obvious, wrong conclusion.

The book had been listed as on the shelf when Sam had checked last night, and he’d made sure to double-check this morning because getting the next nearest copy would’ve required driving over a thousand miles. He even started reading the call numbers when he was still a good six or seven feet of shelf away, running his finger along the labels. So when his fingertip slid off one book and hit empty air instead of the expected leather spine, he knew he hadn’t screwed that part up. He was looking at a gap precisely where the book should have been.

Panicking was _not_ the first thing Sam did. He took a deep breath and started looking around just in case someone had misplaced it, though this part of the library was so dusty he kept sneezing. After checking five feet in all directions, he walked out of the aisle and headed for the nearest computer catalog station.

‘Checked Out.’

Sam stared hard at the words. He’d looked up the book’s status after breakfast, and they’d gotten here about…an hour and forty minutes afterward. All right, an innocent explanation was possible. He still had a hard time not emulating Dean and kicking the hell out of the nearest piece of furniture. What were the chances—

Something thudded and Sam turned around, frowning, but nobody was there except him and Dean, who was completely comatose now and couldn’t possibly have made the noise. Anyway, it’d sounded a little muffled, like…like it’d come from outside, maybe.

He walked over to the nearest window, which was to the left of the couch, and checked out the surroundings. The usual flow of students was moving around beneath, with the occasional chatting cluster here and there. Nothing out of the ordinary, really. His eyes drifted on and landed on one girl carrying a large book. It was old-looking, sort of like what he’d been expecting to find. God. It’d been an hour and forty minutes, so who could’ve possibly…

A small, short stab of pain jabbed up from behind Sam’s ear into his eye and he winced, leaning forward to rest his forehead on the window. He stared harder at the girl. His head throbbed again and he irritably wondered what they’d have to put up with next. Vampirism, family problems, migraines…Jesus Christ, when did it end?

The girl turned around, and Sam knew who she was and suddenly he knew _exactly_ who’d checked out his book.

Sam snarled and shoved himself back from the window. Just in time, because the glass abruptly rattled so loudly he jumped.

“Holy—what the hell was that?” Dean yelped. He rolled off the couch and scrambled to his feet, staring wildly around.

Sam looked at him, then remembered and lunged back to the window, frantically scanning the area below. He picked up the girl again, and he knew it was her because he recognized her bookbag, but it wasn’t Meg. She was blonde and pretty, but not Meg. The pavilion below was large and open, and he didn’t see any students looking startled or recoiling, as they would have if somebody had just up and bolted from in the middle of them.

“You’re…not holding anything, Sam. What happened?” Dean warily said.

“Nothing. The book’s not here and I got a little frustrated.” Which was true, even if it wasn’t the whole truth. But telling Dean now who’d been out there would just touch him off without anything being around to take the brunt of that. Besides, they were in a library. They were in a library, and Sam was clearly getting rundown if his imagination was getting the better of him. “Come on. It’s one of those ones where you can only have it out overnight, so we’ll get it tomorrow. I can still do the first part tonight without it.”

For a long moment, Dean just looked at Sam. Then he shook his head and got up.

Sam managed to hold back most of his annoyance. “What?”

“Nothing,” Dean drawled. He was parodying Sam’s answer, and making damn sure Sam knew it, too. “Just thought I was supposed to be the one with anger management issues. So where to next?”

“Nearest New Age store. We need some candles and incense,” Sam said.

Dean grimaced. “Please, God, not that patchouli crap. I think I’m allergic.”

“Well, you could just try to sleep through the whole thing. Still ten or so hours of daylight left.”

* * *

Sometimes Dean’s habit of extreme avoidance of the uncomfortable really got on Sam’s nerves, but he supposed that in this case, better that than working with Dean staring at him the whole time. He hadn’t exactly mentioned this to Dean, but because this case of vampirism didn’t precisely match any of the previous cases Sam had found, he’d had to cobble together a couple different rituals and he’d been revising right up till now.

A loud crack echoed through the room and Sam started, then looked towards the door. The sign out front had said the church was closed for repairs and it was a Saturday, so no construction workers should’ve been around, but he was still nervous.

The knob didn’t turn, but Sam got up anyway and walked over to the nearest window to make sure no new cars were parked out front. Nope. He went back to the circle he’d been chalking around Dean, making sure not to step on any of the loose boards. It was a twenty-foot drop from this attic room to the chapel below, and if _Sam_ broke his neck, then they’d really be in trouble. Not that they weren’t already, but thinking too hard about that was unproductive.

He was just squatting down with the chalk when Dean abruptly snapped from dead limp to yawning. Sam paused, but Dean just rolled over and went comatose again. He didn’t snore anymore, but apparently the ‘restless dead’ wasn’t just an expression.

This half of the ritual wasn’t going to get rid of the vampirism itself, but it’d take care of some of the weird problems Dean had been having, like the problem with iron. The only rites Sam had found for reversing vampirism had had to be conducted before the person died and rose again, because then they still…registered as human on whatever cosmic meter was being used. Something like that—Sam had been getting too damn tired for theology at that point. So the first step was getting Dean back that far so the modified ritual would cover him, and then they could deal with the dependence on blood.

Dean woke up again right when Sam had been about to start. Literally: Sam was holding the book and on the verge of saying the first word when Dean suddenly pushed himself up, stretching out his arms. He yawned—his canines momentarily lengthened—then turned to look blearily at Sam. “You weren’t going to just start without telling me, were you?”

“Well, I was getting the impression that that was what you wanted,” Sam muttered. “Don’t interrupt or smudge any of the lines once I start the Latin.”

“No, I was planning on running around everywhere and taking us both out in a big fireball. Jesus, Sam. It’s not like this is the first spell we’ve ever done,” Dean snapped. He pulled himself into a sitting position, then glanced nervously around. His fingers drummed over one ankle, then started picking at his jeans cuff.

Technically no, but there was a hell of a difference between the sort of stuff they’d done before, where anyone with the right pronunciation and a level head could’ve done it, and what they were about to do now. This was on a completely different level.

Sam licked his lips and took a deep breath.

“Hey.”

It was all he could do not to throw the book at Dean. Every false start was just feeding his jitters. “What?” Sam snarled.

Dean was watching him with wide, anxious eyes. He hadn’t looked that scared in a long time, and Sam suddenly wished he could repeat the last five seconds or so.

“You know what you’re doing, right?” Dean said.

After a moment, Sam dragged his eyes back to his notes. He rolled his shoulders, then checked one last time to make sure the sheets were in the right order. He really hoped the ink he’d used wasn’t the kind that bled a lot, because his hands were getting pretty sweaty. “I told you we were going to fix this. I’m not going to break my word.”

“Right,” Dean muttered.

Sam gave him a few seconds to make sure he didn’t have anything else to say, then started. The flames of the candles instantly leaped up to three feet and he heard Dean make a startled noise, and paying attention to that almost made Sam jump a line. He hauled his concentration back in line and tried to shut out everything that was going on around him, focusing on just the weight of the words. How they rolled around on his tongue, how some radiated heat and others ice.

He’d done half the final editing in the car so his handwriting was cramped and uneven, but it seemed to get easier and easier as he read, till it was almost like he’d subconsciously memorized it. Each word popped into his head almost before his eyes landed on it, and he could dimly hear his voice getting stronger and more sure of itself.

It sounded really good, actually. The vowels ran together and blurred into one continuous thrum. It was like being eight again and being short enough to think the backseat was a comfortable-sized bed, curling down on the well-worn leather while from the front seat droned the familiar crackle of Dad’s old-school country-western tapes, or sometimes Dean’s classic rock. Everything was nearby and doing what it was supposed to, and Sam felt safe. Relaxed. Warm. His head was buzzing and when he looked down at his hands, saw the sheets of paper fluttering out of them, he just thought they were so _bright_.

Something rippled, some sound that didn’t quite match frequencies with the rest of the world and Sam frowned, looking up. The world bent and flexed, like he was looking through a lense of water. He lifted his hands and he saw that he could make the world turn and flow with how he turned and wiggled his fingers, and it felt so natural he didn’t question it at all. It was just a push, pull, push, _pull_ \--

\--his hands got filled up suddenly and he curved his fingers, felt the muscle beneath them curve and something hot and wet press against his throat, moving in slow circles. His whole skin sizzled and Sam hissed, pushing down with his hands. His palms slid over the jut of a hipbone and hit scratchy, interfering fabric. Things angrily vibrated.

Not good. He turned his hands and pulled forwards till the vibrations smoothed out and everything was going at the same speed, same bend again. His fingers slid down, then up, and took a lot of the irritating fabric out of the way so when he passed his hands back down, he could feel skin. The heat at his throat moved up, glided along the side of his jaw, and a second heat pushed against the inner side of his thigh. He went with it, letting his leg be shoved aside till he had heat pressed against him from his groin to his neck. It had a surge and ebb to it as well, centered deep in his gut, and after a moment Sam figured out how to control that, too.

He felt some resistance—an urgent slide against him—but fought it down till it acquiesced. Going too fast would recoil badly, and it was better to just let things come naturally. Let it come to him, gather deep within a well he was vaguely surprised to find within himself, so when it inevitably exploded out of the too-small bounds, it wouldn’t hurt as much. It’d just…go.

And suddenly the world was a crazy, nauseating whirl, and it stopped so fast that Sam’s head snapped back. He stared blankly at the rafters for a second, then slowly let out a breath that tasted of sour bile. His hands were on Dean’s hips, and Dean had his head jammed into the crook of Sam’s neck, and Sam had a feeling he wasn’t the only one with come drying between his jeans and his leg.

Dean had had his hands on Sam’s back and arm, but now he pushed them to lie flat against Sam’s chest. He drew a deep, shaky breath, then sharply shoved them apart. “I think we need to talk,” he said, voice soaring high and thin.

Sam lifted one hand and rubbed hard at the side of his face, trying to get the tension there to ease faster. He nodded.

* * *

“It was like I was somewhere else completely. I’d say it was like I was high, but pot _never_ put me that out of it,” Sam muttered.

They’d cleaned everything up, including themselves, and moved back to the car. He was slumped in shotgun and Dean was slumped in the driver’s seat, and neither of them were really looking at the other. At least, not at the same time. They both were shooting plenty of uneasy glances that awkwardly overlapped.

Dean momentarily roused from depressed and ill to incredulous. “You smoked weed?”

“Well, it was college and it was only a few—but that’s not really relevant to the situation. What the hell happened?” Sam pinched the bridge of his nose. Some of the lightheadedness from before was still lingering, though overall he actually felt a little less anemic than before. Of course, that might just be the shock and adrenaline talking.

“If anyone should be asking that question, it’s me. One moment you’re Sam and the next moment you’re—I don’t know who was looking at me, but it wasn’t you. And you were…” Dean made some non-illustrative motions with his hands “…you were glowing, sort of. And you were so doing the pulling this time.”

If they were so doing anything right now, it wasn’t the blame-shifting crap. “Huh?”

“You were giving off this…and I was so hungry, and—and now I’m not,” Dean said, finishing with a surprised inflection. He put up his arm on the window and propped his head against it, staring at the wheel. “I didn’t even bite you. God, Sam. Did you turn me into an incubus now?”

Sam shot him an irritated look and started to reply, then thought better of it. He opened up the glove compartment and dug around till he came up with an iron cross necklace, which he tossed to Dean. “Still feeling any tingles off that?”

Dean caught it and jiggled it. They both obsessively checked their watches till five minutes had passed. “Nope. But what about—” Dean started.

After making sure he had the bag of angelica he’d made up this morning, Sam turned his left hand palm-up and slashed one fingertip with his pocketknife. He heard Dean suck in a breath and turned in time to see Dean try to plaster his face against the window. The grip Dean had on the steering wheel was white-knuckled, and his whole body was shaking.

Sam shoved his finger in his mouth, sucked off the blood, and wrapped it up in a tissue while he rolled down his window. After a few minutes, Dean slowly relaxed back to his former position.

“You could’ve warned me you were going to do that,” he muttered. “Okay. Still a sick-puppy bloodsucking creature of the night, only now with slightly less hang-ups. Sun’s still bugging me, though. I guess we’ll find out about the running water the next time we chase somebody down to a creek and I end up having convulsions on the bank while you get drowned.”

“And I think you don’t have to do both—you know—when you feed now. You could just go with one way or the other.” A quick peek at his finger told Sam it’d scabbed over enough, so he unwrapped the tissue from around it, then pitched it into a trashcan on the sidewalk beside him. He pretended not to notice how Dean’s eyes followed the tissue.

Dean scowled and started to jab at the wheel with one finger. “Yeah, that’s great. Drain you or screw you, that’s how I survive now.”

“If it makes you feel better, you weren’t the only one screwing back there,” Sam said under his breath. Then he winced. “I can’t believe we’re talking about it like this.”

“Way to keep up with the program, Sammy. I’ve been saying that from the beginning, but you just ignored me. Not to mention what you did back there—” That was one jab too many from Dean. The horn went off and they both jumped; some people walking down the other side of the street stopped to stare at them.

Dean slouched lower and tried to hide, which left Sam to do the fake smile and wave routine. Then Sam leaned his head back and stared at the lint on the ceiling.

“What you did back there,” Dean repeated more softly. The frustration had disappeared from his voice, leaving behind a strange concern—almost fear, actually. He flicked an even odder look at Sam, then went back to gazing at the wheel. “You really weren’t there. I don’t think you were following your script near the end, either.”

“I just…” Sam exhaled sharply, but that didn’t do anything for the tightness in his chest. He rubbed at his temples again. “I was just trying to—”

“Yeah, I know.” For once, Dean didn’t sound accusing when he said that.

Actually, that made Sam feel worse. He winced as the beginnings of a headache welled up behind his eyes, painfully squeezing them. “Everything’s just—I don’t know what to think or do now. I’m even seeing things…I thought I saw Meg earlier.”

“Meg?” The bite in Dean’s voice got Sam’s attention; he squinted across as Dean jerked himself upright. “As in the witch that got tossed through a five-story window? What, did she bounce or something?”

“I said I _thought_ I saw her. Turned out it was a different girl,” Sam said. He glanced out the windshield, then back at Dean, who was making the and-what-else? face. “When we were in the library. I was coming back after I found out that someone had checked out the book I needed, and I looked out the window and thought I saw her.”

Dean’s eyebrows went up. Then he turned around and jerked the key around in the ignition. He peeled the car away from the curb like he was auditioning for Nascar. “And you lost your temper. Right. Why didn’t you mention this earlier?”

“Because I’m exhausted and a little low on blood and I also thought I heard Dad calling for us this morning, only then it turned out I was still asleep and dreaming? Dean, where are we going?” They went around a corner so fast that Sam had to slam his hand against the door to keep from going through the window. Then he grabbed the handle above the door and hung on. “Dean. _Dean_.”

“Library. It’s only been—” watch-check, which almost saw them plow into a stop sign “—two and a half hours. I might still be able to pick up something. Jesus Christ, Sam. Some vampire gets me fucked up and you suddenly get these weird powers, and you’re just going to ignore something like that?”

Sam stared at Dean. His brother had his jaw set and his eyes were blazing, and there was _no_ way that this was only about Meg or Sam being a little careless. “It wasn’t her. I looked again and it was somebody else.”

“Yeah, well, she’s a _witch_. Maybe she was pulling one over you,” Dean snapped.

“Except that she’s dead! I mean, we saw her! She fell and she looked pretty damn dead to me!”

Dean gunned the engine just then so it drowned out most of Sam’s words. He still didn’t make it to the stoplight in time and had to slam on the brakes, which got them a flurry of honkings and obscenities yelled at them. Not that any of it seemed to get through to Dean, who just slammed himself back in his seat and glowered out, smacking his hands impatiently against the wheel. “I died and that didn’t exactly end up permanent,” he acidly said.

He…he had a point. He had a very good point there, and God, did Sam hate the fact that the circumstances of his life made that a good point.

“So what do we do if it turns out I wasn’t just hallucinating?” he finally asked.

“What do you think? Figure out how to kill her and then kill her. And make sure it sticks.” The library raced into view, then swung wildly around as Dean whipped the car against the curb. He yanked out the keys and was out of the car before the engine’s roaring had fully died away.

Goddamn it, he still needed to watch it, evil witch or no evil witch. He was getting really close to having other people notice he really, truly wasn’t normal. “Slow down, Dean.”

That earned Sam a glare, but Dean wasn’t stupid. He slowed down and waited for Sam, a provoking look on his face. “You aren’t going to argue about keeping her alive because she’s a person, are you?”

“If she survived a five-story fall, then I don’t think she qualifies as that anymore,” Sam said.

“Neither do I, and don’t talk to me about the ritual and how it’s fixing me and whatever. It didn’t go like it was supposed to, obviously.” Dean started off at a fast clip as soon as Sam drew level with him. His expression made people way ahead of them hastily scatter out of their path. “Don’t say you can fix that, too. Frankly, just the fact that you have to fix me at _all_ \--”

“You’re my brother and she tried to kill us—she tried to kill us and Dad. And if I can’t say any of that, then you can’t start on how you’ve been trying to kill me because it’s _not_ the same thing,” Sam hissed. He glanced aside, then grabbed Dean’s arm and dragged him to the left. “There. See where that guy with the purple umbrella’s standing? She—if it was her, she was there.”

It was obvious Dean wanted to keep arguing, but that was because he was angry and when he was angry, he always wanted to beat the shit out of something. He stood in place for a few seconds while the conflicting urges fought it out on his face, then swiveled to head for the spot Sam had pointed out.

Once he was there, he scuffed his foot against the ground a few times and sniffed at the air like a hound. He frowned and turned around, then bent to poke in a nearby raised garden bed. When he pulled out his hand, he was holding an empty potato-chip bag. “I don’t think you were seeing things,” he finally said.

“What makes you say that? You don’t know what she smelled like before because then you weren’t—yeah.” Sam glanced around, then hunched over against the stares they were getting.

“Because it pings a lot like you. Unless you sneaked down here to have a snack while I was napping?” Dean lifted a questioning eyebrow. When Sam nodded, Dean tossed the bag into a nearby trashcan and slowly turned around, then abruptly took off to the left. 

He went so fast that Sam had no choice but to scramble after, even though the sick feeling in his stomach was urging him to stay put and try to think things through. “Why would Meg ping like me?”

Dean briefly slowed, then started up even faster. “I’m kind of hoping I’m wrong about that.”

He didn’t say anything else, and he didn’t give a chance for Sam to ask about it. He just went, and Sam followed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Blood storage information from [here](http://medlib.med.utah.edu/WebPath/TUTORIAL/BLDBANK/BBPROC.html).


	5. The Long Run

It wasn’t long before it became clear that the trail was leading them—was leading Dean, actually, with Sam just trying to keep up—far away from the center of town. Neither of them had been carrying anything more dangerous than a small knife, so somebody had to go back for weapons as well. That somebody ended up being Sam since Dean didn’t want to risk losing the trail.

By the time Sam got back to the car and got it on the streets, it was well into the afternoon. The morass of one-ways, cutbacks and loops into which the streets turned after he got off campus set him back another forty-five minutes. At one point he actually found himself sitting at an intersection where both roads had the exact same name; he was starting to wonder if the current shortness of his temper was really that unreasonable.

“I just passed a sign saying that,” he said into his cell. “I’m probably less than a mile away.”

Dean impatiently grunted. The background noise mostly seemed to be rustling greenery, with the occasional snapping twig. *Finally. I was starting to think I’d end up watching the sunset all by my lonesome.*

“That’s still a couple hours away. So what’s it look like?” Sam started to take a turn, then slowed to let a woman and her dogs cross in front of him. He could see a thick green fringe of tree-tops down the next road, so he was almost there. Thank God. Maybe he knew intellectually that Dean had eaten and wasn’t going to attack anyone, but it was still hard to convince his fear.

And yeah, his mind was drawing parallels to the last time he’d let Dean go off on his own. He didn’t need Dean bitching at him about not being a mom to know that that was always going to be part of the job, but that didn’t mean Sam wasn’t biting his nails over it anyway.

*Well, there are bushes…nice swing set over there…oh, can you hear the birds?* Dean chirruped in a fake happy voice. Then his tone dropped back to sarcastic. *It’s a neighborhood park. It’s maybe two acres of grass with a border of trees, and nobody’s really around now because it’s dinnertime. I think she was just yanking our chains.*

“Or diverting our attention. Okay, I’m at the curb now.” Sam slightly overshot the curb and had to back up. He winced as the car bounced back down, hoping to God Dean hadn’t heard that. “You coming back?”

Dean didn’t answer right away, apparently because he was doing something that involved a lot of cursing and moving around. *Gross. Well, looks like I found the local dating hot spot. No, I’m going to follow this a little further. It should go out the other side soon, and if all I see is…hang on.*

“What? What’s going on?” Sam started to say. A loud beep cut him off and he reflexively jerked the phone from his ear, then put it back. “Dean? Damn it, Dean!”

No answer, and no background noise either. In less than a minute, Sam was out of the car and walking as quickly as he could without breaking into a run, both his and Dean’s guns stuck in his waistband. He glanced down at his phone, then looked again. Then he was torn between the desire to pitch the thing into the nearest tree and relief so sharp and sudden that it was almost painful. His cell was just low on batteries and had cut out.

Sam redialed and was greeted by a nerve-fueled snarl. *What was that?* Dean demanded. *Is she there?*

“No, it’s just…my phone’s dying on me. What’d you see—actually, where are you?” Sam said. He scanned the park. It was mostly clear viewing, but near the far end, the trees congregated into an uneven, opaque stand. That seemed the most likely choice, so Sam headed that way.

*In the back. Pass that merry-go-round thing so it’s on your left, then take the trail—you’ll see a sign. Right now I’m looking at a bunch of iron crosses strung up on some tree branches. Think the neighborhood’s got a tortured artistic type floating around?* Dean sounded on the verge of a serious temper-snap.

It took a second for Sam to spot the trail marker Dean had mentioned, and when he finally did begin to answer, his damn phone beeped at him again. He pulled it away, then put it back when he saw that it hadn’t turned itself off this time. “Stay where you are, all right? I’m almost there.”

*You know, at this point I think I’m okay with the idea of draining all her blood. There any kind of bad reaction or something like that that I should know—hey! You—oh—*

Sam heard a strange whistling sound, followed by a loud, wet _thunk_. Then a series of crackles and crunches as the phone got jostled around. Someone gasped, which was followed up by a series of growled curses from Dean.

The wind blew up behind Sam so hard that he was shoved forward by it and had to start moving again to keep his balance. Then he was running with gun in hand. “Dean?”

More crunching. Then a voice bubbling over with suppressed amusement purred into his ear. *He’s a little busy right now, Sam.*

Meg. As much as Sam wanted to just keep running down the path, he knew that would be a stupid idea and probably get Dean killed even faster. He made himself stop and concentrate, straining his ears. The wind was still gusting around and after a moment, he made out a thready clinking in its moaning—Dean was that way. If Meg had been able to catch him off-guard, then she had to have been upwind. “Touch him and you’re dead.”

The sound of the wind passing through the trees hid the noise Sam made in getting off the trail and shoving through the underbrush, but only for his first few steps. Then it abruptly died down. At the same time, a sudden hot buzzing went through Sam’s head, briefly making his vision blurry, and he had to grab for a tree for support. He gritted his teeth and pushed on as soon as he could.

*Boy, does that sound familiar,* Meg said. She made something clink—she had some kind of weapon and had just cocked it. *You really know how to make a girl feel welcome.*

Dean spat out some comment and Meg laughed. Then she did something that had Dean cursing through what sounded like gritted teeth. Something near her suddenly made a sickening wet pop; Sam flinched, then sped up. He could hear their voices in the air as well as through the cell phone now. “Well, it’s hard to be nice to someone who keeps coming after my family.”

*Oh, Sam. It’s only for your own good, you know…but you don’t. That’s all right—you’ll see soon enough. I think you’ll even thank me.*

*Bullshit—* Dean started. The racket of a struggle cut him off and he ended with a pained hiss.

Just then, a break in the leaves finally gave Sam a view of them. Meg’s back was to him; she’d cornered Dean against a trunk and he was leaning hard on it, holding onto one bloodstained thigh. His eyes were fixed on something she was holding…she moved and Sam saw it was a crossbow. A loaded crossbow.

Close enough to a stake, and it might go off if he shot her now. A familiar pain surged up in Sam’s head, but this time he welcomed it. He still held it back, but only so it’d build up a little more before it went out and did whatever it was that it did. “Meg, back off.”

*I don’t think so.* Then she turned, and he saw a coy smile flash over her face just as the agony in his head slammed outwards—

\--slammed back in, sending Sam backwards. He grabbed for his temples and fought it, but it washed right over him. The last thing he heard was Meg laughing her goddamn head off.

* * *

“Sam! Sam, damn it, wake up! This is not the time to be napping!”

Dean could just go to hell. What the…why was Sam’s head hurting so much? What had they been doing—

\--no, not clubbing. At least, not the kind that involved dancing, disco balls and beer. Sam rolled over, hissed as the throbbing pain in his head briefly crested, then pushed himself up on his hands and knees. Something felt wrong about the way his body moved; he realized after a second that the weight was off. The guns he should’ve had were gone. “Where is she? Where are you?”

He blindly reached out. His knuckles hit concrete and metal and a jagged space through which cool air was flowing. He pulled back his hand, then turned it sideways and squeezed it through the hole. The edges scraped hard and he could feel blood starting to run.

On the other side of the wall, Dean made a funny choked noise. “Fuck.”

A quick look around told Sam they were in some abandoned building—probably one of the many college buildings slated for major reconstruction. The changes to this one must have been more a matter of cosmetics or technological updating, since the walls and floor all still looked solid. The windows were covered in thick plastic sheeting, but Sam was still able to tell it was nighttime. At least Dean wouldn’t have to worry about any narcoleptic fits now. “How’s your leg?”

“Fucked,” was Dean’s succinct answer. Sam could hear him dragging himself over, and then warm breath blew over Sam’s hand. “You should probably get that hand back. I’ve lost a lot of blood.”

“Then I’d better keep it where it is. It’s bleeding anyway—go ahead. I’ll yank it out if you get too attached.” Most of the building’s interior had been ripped out so Sam could see clear across the whole floor, but one section had been left behind. After pushing and poking at the wall, Sam decided that breaking in wasn’t an option. He started to ask Dean if there was a door, but happened to glance up and so found out he was at the door. It’d been bricked up and his hand was jammed through a small hole where a careless worker hadn’t set the brick right up against the metal doorframe. “That _bitch_. Dean—is there—”

The breath wafting over Sam’s hand was getting warmer as Dean leaned closer. It was coming in short, raspy bursts of uneven length. “I don’t know where she went. And there’s nothing else besides this door—no windows, no anything. Unless you want to try breaking in from the top or bottom.”

Sam thumped his knee on the ground: that wasn’t an option unless he managed to round up some heavy-duty construction equipment in the next few minutes. It was really strange…he had plenty of exits. It was like Meg didn’t give a damn whether he left or not…or maybe she’d gotten a lot smarter than last time. “Dean. Drink the goddamn blood. You’re a lot stronger now, so you’d have a better chance of breaking through.”

After a sharp inhale, Dean abruptly slid his tongue over the side of Sam’s index finger. Then he jerked back and coughed. “If I wanted to get my leg healed in one go, I’d have to take so much blood you’d deflate like a popped tire. Nothing doing.”

“Well, at least take something so when I do get you out of there, I don’t have to worry about beating you off till we get out of here,” Sam hissed. Since he’d woken up, he hadn’t seen a trace of Meg and that seriously worried him. He glanced around again.

Something made a noise on the floor above them, but then Dean’s tongue was on Sam’s hand again, curling tightly around his finger. A sharp point snagged the side of a cut, then dug down deeper. Sam grabbed at the wall with his other hand and tried not to suck in his breath too loudly at how much it hurt. Dean slid his tongue further down so his lips touched Sam’s hand, hesitated, then latched onto Sam’s scraped knuckles and sucked hard.

A clatter at the far end of the room made Sam jerk his head around. He didn’t see anything except a shadow flapping past one of the windows: a bird. He sighed and slumped back against the wall, trying not to wince when Dean’s teeth caught him again.

“How very noble of you,” Meg suddenly said.

Sam whipped around and glimpsed the brassy shine of her platinum hair just before something slammed him halfway across the room. His hand ripped out of the hole and his ribs came within a hair of caving in. At least, that was what it felt like, and trying to get back up set his entire chest on fire. He fell back on his arms and looked up just in time to see Meg kicking something through the hole. She plugged up the hole afterward with a piece of broken brick, then stepped back. “Yell all you want, Dean. He can yell louder.”

Her comment was illustrated by a noise that started as a low grumble and quickly rose to a thunderous roar that made the whole building shake. “What did you just put in there with him?” Sam snarled.

Meg paused, then turned to face him as if she’d forgotten he was even there. A smile slowly cut its way across her face as she started to walk towards him. “You know what Dean’s problem is? He’s too stuck in his own ways. Always thinks the way he sees the world is how it really is. So I just thought I’d give him a taste of reality.”

“He doesn’t need it.” Sam painfully rolled over, then sat up to face her. Every time she took a step, he pushed himself back an equal amount. He kept his hands moving behind himself, but they didn’t run into anything, let alone anything useful.

Dean suddenly shouted—incoherent, but enraged. Then a ferocious clamor started up inside that room; several times something hit the door hard enough to make the bricks shiver. Dust and even some chips of mortar fell from them.

“Well, I’m only going by what you told me,” Meg said in a silky voice. Then she laughed and cocked her head; the pressure that had been building up behind Sam’s eyes suddenly vanished.

That didn’t happen without a fight that left Sam reeling and struggling to keep focused on Meg while his vision crazily spun for second seconds. He backed up more and his elbow bumped something hard—the wall. Damn it. He needed to think of something, and now. “What the hell do you want with us?”

“It’s not me.” Meg cooed it while bending forward. Her arms were crossed over her chest so they pushed up her breasts. She glanced down at herself, then smiled at Sam. “I think we were interrupted last time. And you know, I really would like to get to know you under better circumstances.”

“I don’t think we have the same idea of better circumstances,” Sam muttered. A series of loud thuds from the room made him wince, but he resisted the urge to look away from her. He pushed his other hand, which was still bleeding, behind himself. The floor was nice and smooth, and the blood hadn’t clotted up yet. He squeezed the cuts till more ran down his fingers, then extended his index finger till it touched the concrete. “Did you sic that vampire on Dean?”

A tiny shadow of annoyance passed over Meg’s face. She straightened up and gazed down at Sam with a mixture of contempt and disappointment. After a few moments, she pulled out Sam and Dean’s guns and set them on the floor. Shoved them over with her foot so derisively that Sam didn’t bother picking them up. “Then again, you’re not really living up to all this potential you’re supposed to have. You take so long to understand things that I’m not sure what all this effort is about.”

“Did you or did you not have a hand in that?” For nearly two weeks now, Sam had been living and breathing research in magical rituals, liturgies, and symbols. He’d looked in a lot of places to in order to find a way to help Dean. Some of them Dad wouldn’t even have approved of, but Sam had been willing to do anything, try anything.

From the room came a hoarse, desperate cry that was suddenly, shockingly cut off. Something heavy fell to the floor. Silence followed, and followed, and followed.

This time, it wasn’t hot fury that coiled about inside of Sam. Actually, he felt strangely cold and calm, and when the pressure built up in his head this time, he just…accepted it. Absorbed it.

Meg didn’t seem to catch on this time, because she just glanced casually over her shoulder. Then she turned back to look at Sam. Her eyes flicked down and she demurely moved the toes of one foot in small circles against the floor. “If you _really_ must know…that wasn’t me. I’m not the only one, you know. But I’m actually surprised—I thought the idea was to get you in a position where you’d have to kill Dean. Nothing like permanently cutting family ties for starting a new life.”

“That’s a little too drastic for me,” Sam said. He added the last curl to the sigil he’d drawn on the floor, then threw himself sideways.

He let himself keep rolling and came up on his feet again just as a brilliant flash of light exploded outwards from the wall where he’d been. It engulfed Meg just as she threw up her arms to block it, looking shocked. Sam didn’t really feel too guilty about how pleased he was over that.

Then he remembered about Dean, and enjoying Meg’s comeuppance completely slid out of Sam’s mind. He scrambled for the room and slammed into the bricked-up door, beating on it with his fists. “Dean! Dean! Are you—”

Some warning bell went off in Sam’s mind and he ducked, then threw himself sideways a fraction of a second before a dark, shadowy thing would have gutted him. He crawled frantically away, then flipped around just as a handful of black claws swiped at him. A quick twist let him slip out the side, but not without getting his arm ripped open.

He stumbled and his foot hit something—a crowbar. Sam scooped it up, then barely avoided having his skull opened up. He leaped back and his outstretched hand hit the wall. Then he spun and frantically smeared blood. He finished just as claws slammed down on his shoulder; he went down in agony, but no follow-up blows came and he was able to get back on his feet almost immediately.

The thing, whatever it’d been, was gone. In its place was a screaming, patchy-grey thing that was running straight for Sam. He lifted the crowbar, but recognized it as Meg at the last minute and yanked the rod back down so it’d spear her in the chest.

She tried to stop, he thought, but her momentum carried her too far forward. The impact shoved Sam back against the wall, flinching as her ragged nails flailed inches from his face. Huge grey flakes fell off her and he realized that those were pieces of skin, but he didn’t have the time to be nauseated.

He heaved forward and she went down on her back. Her head hit the concrete with an odd clunk, like she had steel plates in her skull. Blood was welling up around the crowbar, but it wasn’t all the way through. Sam shoved down his disgust, got himself braced, and then pushed till he felt the end of the crowbar hit the floor. 

Warm stuff splattered up on his face. He flinched and fell back, rubbing hard at his cheeks and eyes and mouth till most of it was off. Then he looked at her with her wide, lifeless eyes.

It still might not be enough. One legend had connected witches to vampires, saying a dead witch might rise again as a bloodsucker and so a stake through the heart was necessary, but others said only cutting off the head or burning the body—or both—would do it. Sam slumped against the wall and put his hands on his knees, let his head hang down. “God, Dean…”

He lifted his head again. He was beginning to feel a little lightheaded and loose. When he raised his hand, he saw that the dusty air around it was flowing, flickering like fire. That seemed about right.

Sudden heat and a thick, sickly-sweet smell directed Sam’s attention to Meg’s burning body. He watched the flames dance and twine with each other. One in particular caught his attention: it was almost blue and at first it seemed to be issuing from her mouth and nose, but then it moved off her and towards him. He stretched his palm over the leaping tip and didn’t feel any heat at all. Then he reached down—

\--a loud clatter startled him and he missed. Then he looked up, and his mouth dropped open.

“Sam…Jesus…” Dean hung onto the doorway with such force that when he slid a little, his nails left tracks that Sam could see from across the room. He was covered in dust and blood, and beneath that he was so pale he was almost transparent, but he was definitely still kicking. “Don’t—get the hell away from her.”

It took a good ten seconds for Sam to remember who ‘her’ was. He glanced at Meg, but flames had gone out and she’d been reduced to ashes so fine that they looked like ordinary dust. The blue flame had disappeared, too. Then he went back to gaping at Dean. When he pushed himself off the wall, he teetered for a while before he could balance enough to actually walk over to Dean. “How did you—”

“Went up. That goddamn thing started banging me against the ceiling and—never mind.” As soon as Sam was close enough, Dean grabbed him by the shoulder and yanked him forward. Then he slid his hand up to grab Sam’s chin and drag it down, staring hard into Sam’s eyes. Terror flashed through his own before it slowly dissipated, only to be replaced by worry.

Sam belatedly thought about the fact that Dean couldn’t really stand and grabbed Dean under the arms, helping him to stay up. “I thought you were dead.”

“Yeah, I could tell. You—were you about to—never mind, never mind.” Dean jerked Sam’s head down another inch and stared even harder at him. Then he gave Sam’s shoulder a squeeze and leaned back. His eyes flicked up to the blood smeared over Sam’s neck before he irritably shook Sam off. “Come on, let’s go.”

* * *

“We’re going to have to find out where she was staying, since the book might be there,” Sam said. He tied off the bandage around his wrist, then awkwardly pulled on his shirt. It was a hot night and sweat beneath bandages was hellish, so for the moment, he left the shirt unbuttoned.

Dean didn’t answer. When Sam turned around, he found Dean lying on his back with his eyes closed. He came very, very close to having a panic attack before Dean’s eyes opened and tracked over to him.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea. I think we should put as much mileage between us and here as possible,” Dean replied. His expression didn’t give a single clue as to his sudden insanity. On the contrary, he looked about as genuinely serious as Sam had ever seen him.

Sam took the time to compose himself and still ended up with his voice cracking. “What? But without that book, we’ve got to drive a thousand miles before we can finish—”

“I don’t think you should finish it anyway. Actually, I’d really appreciate it if you never, ever did a spell again.” After giving Sam a meaningful look that completely failed in its purpose, Dean struggled up into a sitting position. He grimaced and pressed his hand on his injured thigh. “Man. I can’t believe these black pants are the loosest ones I’ve got. I’m going to look like some private-school priss for the next few days.”

Sam had made him take some more blood—when it came down to it, Dean hadn’t been all that keen on the smears of Meg’s blood after all—but he’d taken maybe a cup and a half before he’d stopped, saying he wasn’t going to risk more right now. And as much as Dean obviously needed it, Sam had to agree. The more time that passed, the more he felt how utterly trashed the fight had left him. In fact, maybe he’d gotten his head hit a couple times more than he remembered, because there was no way he was hearing Dean right. “What?”

At first it looked as if Dean was going to blow the whole thing off, but then he sighed. He absently started picking at the hem of his shirt. “Sam, that vampire didn’t just get me. Maybe he didn’t bite you, but he still got you to the edge of a long fall. And it gets worse when you’re doing whatever it is you do with the telekinesis and fire-throwing and…and I think that the demon we’re chasing, the one that got Mom and Jessica? It’s counting on that.”

“What are you talking about? I know we chase some weird stuff, but this kind of conspiracy theory’s out there even for us,” Sam incredulously said.

Except Meg had made that one comment, and…and Sam wondered about that blue flame.

“Am I?” Dean glanced up at Sam, then down at his hands. He stopped making his shirt fray and moved on to picking at some of the scabs on his knuckles.

“But…but that means you have to stay like this. And you’ll have to keep feeding. Look, it’s just one more time…” Sam stopped because the stubborn line of Dean’s jaw said going on was a waste of air. “Goddamn it, I’m not going to kill you, or stand by while you go with the heroic _stupid_ suicide. Look, Dean, these powers have come up before, and those weren’t things I could control or predict.”

The muscle in Dean’s jaw clenched. He finally looked Sam straight on. “I’m going to try really hard to stay…mobile, so you can stop worrying about that. It’s pretty obvious now that if I kick it, then you’re on the next train to Monster-land.”

“Well, thank you for your vote of confidence in my moral fortitude, Dean,” Sam sarcastically said. “It’s so nice to know that—”

“No, it’s not, and if you just pulled your head out of your ass and looked at yourself, at what you’ve been doing lately, you’d see I’m right,” Dean snapped. He jerked himself back as if to get off the bed, then resettled himself and stared steadily at Sam. “Look, maybe you couldn’t control it. But—”

But Sam had been getting better; he just hadn’t mentioned it to Dean. He’d been throwing up magical symbols and…and getting comfortable with it. And he’d killed Meg, and he still didn’t feel any guilt over that. He maybe felt some pangs over his lack of guilt, but even then he wasn’t sure if that was real. The thing was, he’d been so frustrated and resentful over failing in the situations that really counted, and over shifting back into a lifestyle that he knew didn’t fit him after four years of living in fear of revealing how much he didn’t fit there either…it’d been surprisingly good to feel something come naturally.

“—you do a spell that isn’t one of those laymen deals, that’s something meant for real witches and warlocks, and you get closer to doing it. And I have a real strong feeling that that’s not a good thing. It’s like watching you tease a caged animal, and knowing the bars could break,” Dean finished in a sober tone. He tipped his head, then took a stab at making a more lighthearted face. It and his jeer came out slightly strained. “If it makes you feel better, it’s not like I don’t have a problem like that.”

“The feeding. But you hate that. You hate it and it’s eating you up inside. It’s not any easier for me to watch that.” If all of that was true, then Sam just didn’t see a way out of this.

Dean lifted and dropped one shoulder, glancing to the side. He moved his eyes back to Sam, swallowed hard, and slowly pulled each word out of his mouth as if they were chunks of himself. “I can put up with it till we find some way to reverse the vampirism that doesn’t involve you doing it. But it’s not really me so much as you, when it comes to that.”

He pressed his lips together so the last word came out a little flattened and watched Sam open his mouth, close it, nervously twist his hands around. He was tired and weak, and giving up on this one. Even if it was just temporary, it still was a terrible thing to see. It was like watching Dean watching Dad drive off again.

The long pause on Sam’s part wasn’t so much thinking about what he’d choose—he’d already done that and wasn’t going back on it—as about damning everything about this situation. But that was how it was, and he couldn’t do anything about it now.

“You need to feed again?” he asked.

Dean hesitated, then nodded. “Not blood this time. I think I can get by with the other way. That’ll put less of a drain on you.”

“Right. Well…” Sam swung his legs onto the bed, then reached for Dean’s arm. By the time his fingers wrapped around it, Dean was already sliding between his knees and pushing against his throat. Apparently the idea was to do it as fast as possible.

It was a good idea in theory, but in practice their injuries forced it to be slower. And this time there wasn’t shock or magic or anything else keeping Sam from knowing exactly what was going on and what they were doing. It was Dean’s mouth moving over his throat, and then over his mouth because in the end, Dean had to take a little nip, and it was Sam’s hands uneasily riding on Dean’s waist, passing up to bump against Dean’s ribs and then down over his hips as he started to grind against Sam.

And that was Dean’s cock making that hot bulge beneath the rough cloth, then sliding into Sam’s hand, and those were Dean’s fingers hooked into Sam’s waistband. Some twisted sense of fair-play on Dean’s part, maybe. But Sam was getting an erection off this, and he was kissing his brother while he stroked Dean’s cock. When Dean jerked and twisted against him, part of the reason why was him, and when he splattered himself out over Dean’s hand and stomach, he couldn’t honestly say it wasn’t not about Dean. It wasn’t right and it wasn’t how it was supposed to be, but it was how they would have to be.

“You can wash up first,” Dean muttered.

Sam bit back a pained laugh as he got off the bed. “Just come in with me and we’ll share the stupid sink. The bathroom’s not that small.”

After a moment, Dean got up. They took care of what they had to in silence; Sam got done first and went back out while Dean was still splashing his face. He got in bed and rolled onto his side so he could stretch out his injured arm.

A few minutes later, the mattress on Sam’s left side sank down under Dean’s weight. He turned off the light just as Sam looked up, but the laptop screen glow came on almost immediately afterward. Dean absently waved his hand at Sam. “Go to sleep. I’m just going to start looking for the next job.”

“Try and find an easy one,” Sam muttered. He glanced up at Dean, then laid his head on the pillow. He closed his eyes. Sleep wasn’t going to be coming any time soon, but he’d pretend. He’d had enough of cold hard reality for a while and he needed a break.


End file.
